Medical supply distributors sell to three market segments—physicians, long-term care providers, and acute care providers. Characteristics of each market segment include*:

• Physicians: These distributors sell standard medical and surgical supplies, lab equipment for simple tests, and furniture (i.e., exam tables and stools) to doctors in facilities ranging from single physician practices to multi-site clinics. Nurses are usually in charge of ordering products, and salespeople develop relationships with customers and set prices on customer-by-customer basis
  • These distributors would benefit from mobile or PDA functionality to take orders at the customer sites.
  • Distributors’ customers would benefit from B2B e-Commerce (i.e., the ability to take orders and check stock at anytime.)
• Long Term Care: These distributors sell gloves, paper, nutritional, and hygiene products, and eternal feeding devices to long term care facilities (i.e. nursing homes) one customer/corporation usually owns several facilities, and distributors must deal with several ship-to addresses for each bill-to or sell-to address. The salespeople working on these accounts act as account managers, rather then order takers, and must comply with home/office or corporate approved formularies. These facilities often use OmniCell and Pyxis applications (similar to Tool Cribs) so that they can monitor cost on a patient by patient basis.
  • Because products need to be monitored on a patient level basis, these distributors would benefit from the ability to identify products with bar code labels.
  • Distributors’ customers would also benefit from B2B e-Commerce so that they can check stock and pricing at anytime.
• Acute Care: These distributors work primarily on contract (cost-plus) with their customers on a high volume, stockless, daily delivery basis. As heavy EDI users, many also work with customers via Pyxis, OmniCell, or BCX (machines similar to Tool Cribs), so costs can be monitored on a patient-by-patient basis. These distributors also perform kitting, manage stat rooms and formularies, and must manage inventories on a floor-by-floor basis for hospitals.

 *Some distributors may fall into more then one of the above categories.

Industry Terms

Due to the brevity of the industry and differences from distributor to distributor, it is impossible to define a set of terms useful in working with an account. The following sites provide databases in which you can search for a more specific medical product, product related, or business term:

www.pharma-lexicon.com/searches/medterms.php

www.deha.org/Glossary/GlossaryG.htm

www.medterms.com/script/main/hp.asp

• Kitting Capabilities: Medical distributors often supply doctor’s offices and/0r hospitals with the same group of items over and over again. Infor’s ERP FACTS helps distributors handle this by allowing distributors to associate groups of items to different locations or customers because one doctor might request a surgical tray prepared differently from another doctor, or because one floor of a nursing home may have different requirements from the next.
• VHA and Agency Reporting: Medical distributors often do business with group purchasing organizations (GPO) like VHA (a member owned and member driven health care cooperative), and must produce detailed reports to claim participation dollars. Infor’s ERP FACTS helps distributors handle this by allowing users to store an unlimited amount of vendor, customer, and item information and pull that information according to GPO demands. Bar Coding: Due to the nature of the industry, medical distributors must ensure that they deliver the right products to the right customers. Infor’s ERP FACTS helps distributors by providing the ability to barcode items, and print barcode labels for items received that may not have manufacturer barcodes already attached to packaging.  
• Document Imaging/Linking: Medical distributors must often keep paperwork – like Medicare Certificates of Medical Necessity—in file for a certain amount of years. Infor’s ERP FACTS helps distributors decrease paperwork by providing document imaging capabilities, in which distributors can scan paper documents and link them to records within the solution.
• Rebate Management: Many top manufacturers offer medical distributors rebates for selling certain products to certain customers. Infor’s ERP FACTS helps distributors handle this by:
  • Automating the process each step from negotiation to receipt and beyond is recorded, in real-time, and reflected in the solutions General Ledger.
  • Allowing users to produce detailed, easy-to-understand rebate reports. Reports provide accurate, concise information distributors need to claim rebates.
  • Ability to transmit the sales tracking and rebate forms to manufacturers by EDI (electronic data interchange)
• Return Material Authorizations: Medical distributors often accept returns from customers. Infor’s ERP FACTS helps them handle this by:
  • Generating return material authorizations for each product that moves off premises.
  • Allows distributors to generate cash or credit refunds through the system, and return stock to inventory or discard it, depending on the reason for return.
• Serial Number and Lot Tracking: Medical distributors must keep track of equipment serial numbers for recall and record keeping purposes. Infor’s ERP FACTS helps distributors track these numbers by:
  • Offering flexibility in how they track the information; record item serial numbers as they enter the business to produce detailed inventory reports, and when they leave to comply with the Safe Medical Devise Act.
  • Distributors may also choose to group all items manufactured at the same time together, or record lot numbers in FACTS at the point of sale.
• Corporate-Customer ID Relationship: In the medical industry one corporation or organization often owns/and or operates several smaller healthcare providers. So, while a distributor may ship product to three or four different locations, they may be required to send bills and other documents to just one location. Infor’s ERP FACTS helps distributors handle this by offering the ability to group an unlimited number of customers under the same corporate ID to help decrease accounts receivable days and bad debt.

Infor has customer overviews available on the following Medical Supply distributors

• Pharmex
• AmBu
• Other Available Upon Request

Associations

• Health Industry Distributors Association (HIDI) www.hida.com 

Trade Shows

• MedSurg Conference and Expo www.hida.com

Education On-Line

• www.eol.com   The medical industry’s training and resource center; It is designed to be a centralized website that includes training modules, general product information, online manufacturer customer service, resource links, along with industry news and information links. Representatives have access to all the products they sell at one central site as well as on-line resources tools for review and managing up to date information.

Buying/Marketing Groups

• Independent Medical Co-op (IMCO) www.imcoinc.com
•  National Distribution & Contracting Inc. (NDC) www.inc-inc.com
• ABCO Dealers Inc. (ABCO) www.abcodealers.com
• Starline www.starlinemedical.com
• Central Independent Dealer Association (CIDA) www.cidanet.com
• American Dental Cooperative www.gotoadc.com
• United Dental Distributors (UDD) www.e-dental.com/storefronts/udd.html
• American Surgical Specialties Companies www.assc.com

Publications

Repertoire Magazine: (12 issues/year) www.mdsi.com –Repertoire reached the homes of over 10,000 people involved in the sales of medical products and services. Its primary readers are the 8,000 sales reps, management, purchasing/operations and executives from distribution. This includes independent distributors, as well as Cardinal, Fisher Healthcare, Henry Schein Medical, McKesson, Owens & Minor, PSS World Medical (including Gulf South) the remainder of its circulation reaches the medical manufacturer community and independent manufacturer’s reps who are involved in selling through distributors.  

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