Q: What is HealthOne’s best practice for reducing implant costs?
Julie Martin: For our implants, it is absolutely critical we have consignment agreements. Most healthcare venues don’t want to carry an overhead of implants, so having the ability to have consignment and have vendors help us with managing consignment is critical. For instance, for our total knee implants we are not going to carry a whole line of those from five vendors. We expect them to come in and provide the product as we need it; otherwise huge dollars are tied up in inventory.
Q: Metrocrest also depends on consignment agreements as a means of reducing implant costs. What benefits are yielded from doing so?
Meg Tomlinson: I couldn’t tell you how many different styles and product numbers for implants and shoulder anchors we have. What we found over the years is that one of our orthopedic physicians may go to a seminar and want a new supply, like implants. So we may work with a vendor to order it, and then the physician doesn’t want to use it anymore. That’s when we decided to get our vendor representatives to bring those implants in on consignment and bill for implants as we use them. Our wire-shelved cart of all the different types of shoulder anchors and implants we use for shoulders are now all on consignment.
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