Project Managers Are Key to Healthcare Equipment Procurement

Managing complex orders for equipment used in healthcare is about more than placing the order and making the delivery.

Constructing a medical facility can be a complicated process that requires precise planning and communication. From selecting the right equipment to ensuring timely installation, healthcare providers need to coordinate, almost hourly it seems, with a small army of manufacturers, equipment planners, contractors, and stakeholders. This is where project management services offered by healthcare equipment distributors become essential. Project managers help keep lines of communication open with everyone, resolve challenges and problems, and help facilities contain costs associated with healthcare equipment procurement.

Open Communication With Everyone Involved

Communication is the key to coordinated procurement and delivery of equipment for healthcare facility construction projects, especially when Owner Furnished, Contractor Installed (OFCI) Group 1 equipment is involved.

What better way to assure information is actively exchanged and shared than to work with a specialty distributor with an in-house team of experienced project managers.

Our project management (PM) teams are comprised of professionals dedicated to your project, from start to finish. They are the central point of contact and are responsible for proactively communicating with the contractors, equipment planners, facility representatives, and internal equipment distribution teams. This continuous level of communication is essential for the successful coordination of all the moving parts related to healthcare equipment procurement for complex medical construction projects.

The University of California, Irvine and UCI Health’s $1.3B medical campus building project is an excellent example of how CME project managers contributed healthcare equipment and project management expertise to the undertaking. Early in the planning stages our equipment experts were in conversation with UCI and third-party equipment planners about selecting and sourcing healthcare equipment for the 225,000 square foot Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and Ambulatory Care building.

As the project moved from planning to building, the project management team implemented several communication strategies in the early stages of the construction stage to coordinate the receipt and inspection of equipment at our warehouse, including OFCI equipment. These planned and structured approaches to communication continued through to the assembly, delivery, and installation of the healthcare equipment. And this was accomplished in addition to managing the procurement of over 4500 pieces of equipment across multiple manufacturers.

These communication strategies included:

Weekly Tracker Reports: Weekly tracking reports were sent to key stakeholders throughout the project. These status reports were often the catalyst for weekly phone calls with the people essential to a specific stage of the build schedule.

The tracking reports include information about the status of OFCI and CME sourced items stored in our warehouse, the location of items delivered to the site, and the assembly status of the healthcare equipment.

Communication with the Warehouse Logistic Team: The PM maintained open communication with the warehouse logistics team to plan delivery of OFCI and CME procured equipment within the strict delivery windows as well as to coordinate those deliveries around the schedules of other vendors on site.

Communication with the Direct-to-Site (DTS) Delivery Team: Open communication with the DTS team ensured critical scheduling and delivery location instructions from the contractors and UCI representatives are forwarded to the delivery teams.

Against the backdrop of tight timelines and stringent regulatory requirements, our PMs served as an extension of the UCI team, orchestrating and overseeing logistics that have not only been customized to the needs of the contactor(s) but are also flexible enough to accommodate the unexpected and unique asks that are part of a construction project of this magnitude.

"It was a tremendous organizational and logistics requirement, and everyone associated with the project is happy with the results. "

Ed Scovil, Northwest Director, Supply Chain for Peacehealth

Solving Challenges and Problems

Given the intricacies of constructing or renovating medical facilities, challenges are inevitable. It is here, in overcoming hindrances and bona fide problems, that the role of project managers emerges, again, as indispensable. From navigating complex supply chain issues to secure required healthcare equipment to synchronizing difficult deliveries with construction milestones, project management teams are the hub for resolving challenges and problems across manufacturers, contractors, and logistics, delivery, and installation teams.

For PeaceHealth in Alaska, our project management and delivery teams were instrumental in ensuring all equipment was delivered undamaged and on time, despite shortened timelines and next level logistical challenges. Think 701 miles of open water, barges, and unpaved roads.

In addition to the project management tasks associated with order tracking, and coordinating, receiving and storing medical equipment in a warehouse, PMs managed the logistics and scheduling of shipping 500 pallets of new medical equipment on barges from the Seattle warehouse, over open water, to Ketchikan Island.

On the island our teams faced limited space for assembly, staging and warehousing, limited trucking services, limited lodging, and to round out the challenges, a rutted, dirt road to the medical facility. Our PMs stepped in and made the calls necessary to set up work arounds to resolve limited resource issues and set up contingency plans that raised the bar on white-glove delivery service.

Despite the challenges, medical equipment deliveries remained on schedule and all equipment was delivered and installed undamaged, saving PeaceHealth the costs associated with a delayed opening or replacing damaged equipment.

"It was the savings, the storage, the direct-to-site delivery included with their white-glove service and, most importantly, CME's flexibility and speed in working with the healthcare system"

Manager of Strategic Sources

Helping Contain Costs

Large medical equipment orders, especially those associated with construction or renovation projects, can cost healthcare facilities upwards of $400,000 per day in lost revenue if they are managed poorly and delivery issues cause a delay in opening. Taking advantage of project management services for procurement, logistics, and delivery services can not only help avoid costly delays but can, in some cases, return savings.

Case in point, a Maryland-based healthcare system saved $182,300 and opened two new facilities on time using our project management and delivery services. As the single point of contact for the healthcare system representatives, the project management team organized the procurement and delivery of the healthcare equipment for the project from the moment equipment orders were placed. They consolidated multiple orders into a few comprehensive purchase orders, saving the organization the hidden costs associated with multiple orders. The work of the PM’s taking the lead with manufacturers to resolve shipping damage issues eased the burden on the purchasing department, saving the facility the cost of employee burnout and absenteeism.

In the warehouse, medical equipment was staged and prepared for consolidated shipping based on instructions from the facility and shared through the project managers. Grouping healthcare equipment as requested by the facility ups the ante for efficiency at the facility receiving dock and minimizes to the point of eliminating the time and cost related to tracking down equipment logged as received but misplaced.

Many healthcare equipment distributors can source quality medical equipment at competitive prices, but only one specializes exclusively in equipment used in healthcare, offers comprehensive project management, white-glove delivery and installation, and is truly a one-stop shop.

CME Corp. is the only one… nationwide.

Helping new medical facilities open on time is one of our passions.

Click CHAT to begin a conversation about CME's project management services.

About CME: CME Corp is the nation’s premier source for healthcare equipment, turnkey logistics, and biomedical services, representing 2 million+ products from more than 2,000 manufacturers. Headquartered in Rhode Island and with service centers coast to coast, our mission is to help healthcare facilities nationwide reduce the cost of the equipment they purchase, make their equipment specification, delivery, installation, and maintenance processes more efficient, and help them seamlessly launch, renovate and expand on schedule.