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How to Build Lasting Manufacturer and Distributor Relationships in Healthcare

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An effective supply chain management system relies on a healthy manufacturer and distributor relationship in healthcare. Manufacturers and distributors are the first two parts of the supply chain before products reach the customer.

Investing in a relationship with your distributers benefits both parties because you can support each other. Ultimately, you will see a greater return in profits and experience fewer frustrations from supply chain disconnects.

Are you ready to learn how to develop this relationship? Then let’s get started.

Key Takeaways

  • Effective communication is foundational for building a lasting relationship with your distributors.
  • A relationship is built on both communicating and listening to the other party’s needs.
  • You may often find your challenges align with your distributors’ challenges and mutually beneficial compromises are possible.

Use Effective Communication

Communication is foundational to building a manufacturer and distributor relationship. 97% of workers say communication impacts their daily tasks. For companies with over 100 employees, miscommunication costs them about $420,000 annually.

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All the other strategies we will explore for building a manufacturer-distributor relationship will be pointless without first establishing efficient supply chain communication channels. These channels are the ways you contact your medical distributors, and they respond to you.

Some ways to foster open and efficient communication is through:

  • Collaboration software
  • Regular emails
  • Company chat platforms like Slack
  • Meetings either live or through video software like Zoom
  • Direct phone numbers to contact management

You should use these communication channels regularly to keep both sides of the supply chain on the same page. When you reach out to one another, you need to remember to spend as much time listening to the other party as communicating your wants and needs.

In addition, keep your information in any shared systems up to date, such as your product data. In this way, your distributors know what products are available and the latest information about the supplies you offer.

Automation makes communication easier by sending alerts and regular emails to your distributors so they all know the latest product updates.

Support Each Other’s Needs

Manufacturers and distributors can come in conflict because you are often not exclusive to each other. However, you should still find ways to support one another to give the additional party flexibility to work with their other connections. For example, you may use multiple distributors, and your distributors sell products from several manufacturers.

For example, a sales tactic you would prefer might not work well with your distributor, who has multiple different types of medical equipment to sell. Both sides should learn to compromise so you can mutually benefit.

One way to foster a supportive environment is to take time to understand each distributor’s situation properly. This means that manufacturing should regularly visit the distributors at their physical stores to see how best to work with each distributor. These visits also allow each party to talk face to face about their needs and what the other person could do to support them better.

Understand Each Other’s Challenges

During your meetings with distributors, take time to know their challenges and share your marketing challenges. While both parties will have roadblocks that make their job more complex, you don’t need to compete with each other.

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Sometimes you might find your challenges are similar, in which case you can work together to solve them in a mutually beneficial manner. For example, manufacturers struggle to keep their branding consistent. Since you often work with several different distributors, you may find that each distributor is promoting your products differently. Unfortunately, customers may lose trust in your company when you don’t have unified branding because they won’t know which message to believe.

However, you can resolve this challenge by providing all the marketing materials for your distributors. Doing this ensures a unified brand appearance while relieving some of the pressure on your distributors because they don’t have to create the materials themselves.

Other times, your challenges may contradict each other. For example, manufacturers focus on selling specific products and promoting new devices. In contrast, distributors want to raise their profit margins. Therefore, distributors concentrate on making sales rather than selling a particular product.

Effective communication can help you find a compromise where your distributor won’t lose money from old supplies they haven’t sold yet while still promoting your new products.

Provide Necessary Materials

You can avoid miscommunication in healthcare distribution by ensuring your distributors receive all the necessary materials for understanding and using your supplies. Creating materials to send over with products also saves your manufacturing team time as you will have fewer phone calls from distributors asking for clarification.

For example, you can create training videos and booklets on your products. This training material will tell your distributors what your product is, how to use it, and how to market the product. In addition, you can provide videos that your distributors can show healthcare workers when demonstrating medical devices.

In the end, your customers will be more satisfied with their experience because they received accurate information and thorough training straight from the manufacturer.

Other marketing materials you can pass along to your distributors include:

  • Signs for their shops
  • Product brochures
  • PDF ads for their websites
  • Product descriptions for their ecommerce shops
  • Product images for their promotions.

Create a Lasting Partnership

Always remember that you and your distributors are on the same team. Ultimately, you both want the same results: to sell your products. While you may feel strongly about certain expectations, you should not push your agenda to the point of compromising your partnership with your distributors.

Not every interaction has to relate to work. Sometimes the best way to invest in a healthy relationship is by investing in your distributors personally. You can send gifts to your distributors, invite them to events, and take time to thank them for their work as a way to show you appreciate their support in your partnership.

Investing in Your Manufacturer and Distributor Relationship in Healthcare

Efficient communication with your distributors begins with quality content that gives a clear and concise message. Share Moving Media helps you develop a stronger relationship with your distributors through better communication like training videos, RepConnect, articles, and advertising campaigns. If you want to reach 95% of the distribution rep community, Repertoire Magazine and Share Moving Media can help!

Contact us for more information on how we can help you connect with your distributors.

5 Key Elements of a Patient-Centric Clinically Integrated Supply Chain

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Hospitals will soon have to examine their supply chain management with a renewed focus. A clinically integrated supply chain will help medical suppliers and manufacturers assist clinicians with providing better healthcare all around. 

A recent study found that hospitals could save more than $25 billion annually by eliminating unnecessary costs in the healthcare supply chains within each hospital. This system ultimately improves care for patients and keeps them safe from harmful drugs or devices.

These medical supplies include clinical inventories such as catheters, stents, and syringes in operating rooms or other procedural areas. Some medical providers rarely take advantage of modern supply chain techniques that can reduce excess and shortages.

Hospitals achieve greater visibility and cost reduction from clinical supplies while also improving safety. Hospitals can take necessary steps to advance a supply chain that is clinically integrated, patient-oriented, and safe for all involved.

Key Takeaways:

  • What fields are impacted by integrated health care supply chains.
  • How to have a patient-centric clinical supply chain
  • Why you should implement a transformation in healthcare with better supply chain management.

The Intricate Network of the Healthcare Supply Chain

Supply management in the medical field is unique and comprises several supply chains, each with specific challenges, such as the high demand for medical supplies from patients that are often at risk to themselves or others due to their condition. 

These clinically integrated supply chains impact the following areas of patient care:

  • Medical/surgical
  • Pharmacy
  • Surgical Trays
  • Prosthetics
  • Medical supplies

For the ultimate benefits, healthcare must eventually administer these matters holistically by working together in a more streamlined and efficient way using the proficiency of inventory directors.

A Patient-Centric Clinically Integrated Supply Chain

By having an integrated supply chain, hospitals and clinics can offer patient-centric care. A healthcare system will fail to improve patient safety if they do not invest in its supply chain. 

Patients receive better treatments when physicians procure supplies by moving from a contracts approach to a formulary model approach. Here’s how:

1. Focus on Clinical Outcomes

Providers can shift the focus of their supply chain from maintaining stock to strategies that impact outcomes. The formulary model for authorized suppliers, such as pharmacy benefit managers and prescription drug plan providers, enables them to become deliberate collaborators. 

Therefore, products become grouped into functionally comparable categories. Within these groups of classification items, evaluations on efficacy, safety, patient outcomes, and cost-effectiveness determine which to authorize for use based on the particular treatment needs at hand.

2. Incorporate Procedural Transformation  

With evolving technology, providers have a chance to rethink how they maintain inventory by incorporating procedural transformation. This new approach will be more sustainable and less expensive.

There are three phases in supply chain transformation:

  • Foundational
  • Optimization
  • Transformational

At the foundational level, there is a priority on departmental materials management. 

However, at an optimization level of hospital-wide supply chain strategies, efficiency and collaboration between departments will be increased to introduce new approaches that balance cost controls with patient outcome improvements. These phases represent vast opportunities for introducing new demand planning methods. These phases also reduce waste and excess throughout all levels of medicine.

The transformational phase can only happen when you acknowledge how complicated this problem has become. Therefore, it requires commitment from all hospitals involved.

3. Connect Clinical Systems to Manufacturer Data

In most industries, a company relies on enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain systems to manage inventories with complete histories of obtaining, receiving, status changes in movement, and utilization. 

The trouble in healthcare is that an item may be procured by ERP then expensed into clinical departments. There it becomes impossible for any system to trace its history or provide pertinent information about inventory levels.

Physicians find innovative ways to protect patient records while obtaining vital device data by connecting clinical systems to manufacturer data. Clinically integrated supply chains provide the means to do that for medical professionals.  

4. Adapt Techniques for Inventory Forecasting

Demand planning is a complex process that uses statistics, historical data, and experience to predict how much inventory you need. Forecasting methods have been used for many years across numerous industries to maximize efficiency by carrying the proper amount of stock at any given time.

These demand-planning tools are essential for any modern organization and provide statistical models that help make calculations more accurate. An automated collaboration capability enables you to get the best possible forecast and safety stock recommendations, providing organizations with the ability to ensure that supply is in line with demand to reduce excess inventories, primarily when used across many facilities. 

5. Facilitate Patient Safety, Traceability, and Recall Efficiency  

When looking at factors like price transparency or population aging, it becomes clear how essential supply management is. Also, it is essential for hospitals and health care providers to identify what devices are in use if there is a recall. 

A recall in more than 18,000 medical devices occurred over the past five years. In case of a device recall, most healthcare facilities will often struggle with identifying which patients may be affected by faulty equipment.

The fundamental goal continues to have a patient-centric supply chain, starting with ensuring the safety of human life. You can create a complete history for a medical device to facilitate patient safety by linking all inventory transactions to that item and its unique identifier (UDI.)

Clinical Supply Chain Management for Healthcare Transformation 

Hospitals are facing pressure to control costs and improve the safety of their patients, meaning that hospitals need an overhaul in their supply chain business model as soon as possible. 

They must give increased attention to their supply chain strategies, as the need for safety is paramount in today’s health care system. 

Are you looking for better ways to make your healthcare supply chain more patient-centric? Contact us today to see how Share Moving Media can help. 

9 Terms Every Medical Sales Rep Should Understand

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Acting as middlemen or bridges, medical sales representatives eliminate the communication gap between medical suppliers and healthcare professionals.

However, this critical role can negatively impact any medical supplier’s sales performance if their representatives do not use proper lingo common to the industry. A crucial part of every medical sales training is learning correct terminology.

Even seasoned reps should keep their knowledge up to date since the healthcare industry is constantly evolving.

A recent study from Markets and Markets revealed that the global market size of the Internet of Things (IoT) would grow from $72.5 billion in 2020 to $188.2 billion by 2025. And with a CAGR or Compound Annual Growth Rate of 21%, expect to see an emergence of new medical terminologies.

Your sales rep’s understanding of new healthcare jargon exhibits credibility to customers, helping establish your company as an authority in the field.

Terminologies Important to Medical Sales Training

Every salesperson needs to have strong negotiation and presentation skills to increase their chances of closing a sale. An excellent communication skill – using proper terminologies – is what binds these two abilities together. Even if you’re running a healthcare content marketing campaign, you should know what terms to use to connect with your audience.

What separates a medical sales rep from a regular salesperson is their industry knowledge, which includes terms specific to healthcare. Here are some terminologies that every salesperson should understand to sell better in this industry:

1. Bundled Payments

With the shift to value-based care, fee-for-service (FFS) payment models are becoming obsolete. Bundled payments make settlements to providers and healthcare facilities easier for patients. Organizations and individual practitioners now have greater accountability for both clinical and cost outcomes.

Bundled payments are single fixed payments that healthcare facilities charge patients or insurers. It is the overall price for the services provided, including treatments and diagnosis over an episode of care. An “episode of care” indicates the care delivered within a definite period or for a specific condition. For instance, a provider receives one payment for the entire knee replacement episode of care.

2. Population Health Management

Population health management is another result of the value-based care model. It’s a holistic approach to improving the health of a group of individuals based on a specific demographic. Some groupings include people with a predetermined health system, individuals sharing the same geographic area, or people with a particular disease.

Information gathered from population health management can help identify patient care gaps in specific areas. Its value to medical sales reps and suppliers lies in proactively allocating medical equipment that providers will recommend to their patients.

3. Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics enables healthcare providers to be prospective instead of retrospective when approaching a patient’s health. It helps optimize outcomes based on recommendations of the best course of action using multiple “what-if” scenarios.

By helping identify which of their patients are at risk, hospitals can proactively use resources such as medical equipment or medication delivery. Predictive analytics can also enhance hospital operations with better equipment provision.

4. Medical Device Connectivity 

Responsible for transferring data between medical devices, medical device connectivity helps eliminate the need for manual data. As a result, providers can give a better and up-to-date diagnosis because of the frequency of data updates from a patient monitor.

Connectivity may be either wired or wireless. The latter provides uninterrupted data transfer even when the patient is in transit. A wired setup, on the other hand, is more stable and is best for static environments.

5. Digital Health

Any usage of digital technologies to improve the physical and psychological well-being of populations can mean digital health. It also refers to any enhancements to the quality and outcome of healthcare using the same advancements. Digital health can also improve computational technologies and smart devices to help healthcare professionals manage their patient’s conditions better.

Wearable tracking devices are an excellent example of how healthcare providers use digital health to monitor sleep patterns or calorie consumption. Furthermore, about 45% of Americans today have experience using digital health products such as fitness trackers and mobile health apps.

6. Micro-Hospital

Small inpatient facilities that usually have eight to 15 beds for observation or short-term use are micro-hospitals. They operate 24/7 and provide emergency care together with laboratory and pharmacy services.

Compared to freestanding emergency departments (EDs), micro-hospitals leave smaller financial footprints. This type of facility provides healthcare services to areas where locals do not need full-scale hospitals. As such, micro-hospitals are usually within 18 to 20 miles of a major hospital.

7. Medical Robots

Medical robots have various uses in the healthcare industry. They are instrumental in surgery, telemedicine, sanitation, and transportation of lab specimens. The growing reliance on surgical robots helps cut down the waiting list for surgeries. Surgeons are still 100% in control of the robot, but the machine’s precision helps reduce the operation time significantly.

8. 3D Printing

Consumer products are not the only ones that benefit from 3D printing. The most widespread use of 3D printing in healthcare today is with the on-demand fabrication of medical devices.

The benefits of using this technology include personalized and customized treatment to patients and consistent availability of medical devices and supplies. A healthcare 3D printer can have various uses such as:

  • Developing models for surgical planning
  • Creating anatomical models for education and training purposes
  • Creating custom prosthetics, implants, or surgical instruments
  • Manufacturing anatomical models for use in pre-clinical validation and verification

3D printing reduces the time and expenses spent in the operating room since physicians can prepare better for surgeries. For instance, a printed bone replica that matches the patient’s bone structure can dramatically reduce surgery time. It can also reduce recovery time, leading to lower medical bills.

9. Telemedicine

Telemedicine helps remove restrictions on location, helping health providers to render better patient care even if they are not on-site. Doctors use it to conduct medical treatments and consultations remotely. Through the use of the internet, satellite, or telephone, telemedicine can provide medical assistance almost the same way as on-site care.

Improve Your Medical Sales Performance with the Right Words

Rapid technology advancements in the healthcare industry are causing the emergence of new terms. Successful medical sales reps are those who are always in the know about the latest trends. By bringing themselves up to speed on new vocabularies, they can connect with their clients better and provide relevant recommendations.

Marketing in the healthcare industry is not just about terminologies. Contact us, and we’ll boost your medical supply business.