Partnership enables Southeastern lab company to grow sustainably while supporting local communities

As an East Coast-based medical laboratory serving more than 20 states, MAKO Medical (MAKO) is working tirelessly to expand its capacity and increase its diagnostic capabilities to meet local, state, and federal needs. As a result, the company has been able to help process more than 2 million COVID tests since April 2020 and in August MAKO announced the company scored 100% on CAP COVID Proficiency Testing.

One of the challenges MAKO identified as critical to its long-term ability to serve its customers’ needs is managing logistics and the company’s supply chain end to end. As MAKO’s Director of Supply Chain Clever Prince explained, they sought a true partner, not just a vendor, to enable them to serve community healthcare needs.

Expanding its supply chain capabilities
As an outsourced lab services company, MAKO has tremendous expertise in serving client’s needs but needed a partner who understood their business and who could structure its distribution channels in a way that allowed them to offer turnaround times of 24 to 48 hours to support MAKO clients.

“One of the key parts of a lab’s operations is turnaround time because the patient at the end of the service chain needs accurate results on time so they can manage their health needs,” says Zach Heyl, Education & Research at Medline. “To assist MAKO, we spent a lot of time working side by side with their team to understand their needs and to put in place a process to make sure they are successful.”

To meet customer demands and required operational cadence, Medline and MAKO implemented an online ordering system that enables the lab company’s customers to place orders for lab services and receive MAKO branded test kits shipped directly from Medline’s distribution centers. MAKO customers then use the test kits to gather samples and send them to MAKO’s lab for processing. From order to test results, the process takes 24 to 48 hours.

Impact of COVID-19
Keeping MAKO’s supply chain working end to end while making sure their team can support thousands of client accounts with a full range of laboratory products and services was MAKO’s day-to-day focus until COVID-19 entered the picture. Initially, the company serviced customers in their region, including North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and Georgia. Today, the lab company is supporting healthcare organizations across the United States and processing more than 40,000 COVID-19 tests per day. In addition to ramping up to serve the country’s testing needs, MAKO recently donated 20,000 COVID-19 test kits to the North Carolina Medical Society.

“When we established MAKO, we sought out a true partner that could support our operations in a scalable way that was sustainable and enabled us to meet the needs of our clients,” says Prince. “We found that partner in Medline and their commitment goes way beyond what’s on paper. Anytime, day or night, we can work with the team at Medline to overcome sourcing issues, logistics challenges, or to bounce ideas off of so we can keep pace with the changing requirements of our customers.”

For more information on how Medline assists healthcare organizations across the continuum of care to enhance their lab supply chain, please visit us here.