Vendors are an essential part of healthcare, but oftentimes providers find those relationships to be one-sided, rather than of mutual benefit. Frank Chapman, COO of Ohio Gastroenterology Group and Center Ohio Endoscopy Center in Columbus, shares his experience with finding a vendor that works for his business in a difficult, shifting landscape.
Question: What do you historically look for in a vendor partner?
Frank Chapman: Well it's funny that you include those two words together – vendor and partner, as they are two different things. I think all of us have vendors but few of us have real partners. To be a partner it takes an understanding of what I face in the healthcare landscape today and then to react in some way to help me meet those pressures.
Q: What factors drive centers like yours to consider making these types of changes?
FC: Change is never fun. It is all too easy to fall into a complacent assumption that the vendors you work with have your best interest at heart, when in fact they are working on behalf of a company whose interest may or may not align with that of your surgical center. Sometimes it's important to kick the alligator back in the swimming pool to see how fast everyone can swim. When you do that with vendors, you find out who is committed to meeting your needs and who is not.
Q: What are the most critical points in preparing your group for a successful process in considering new vendors?
FC: Trust and honesty. I want a vendor to give me their best offer from day one. When a vendor gives me their best offer and then offers a lesser cost later, I wonder what would have happened if I took their initial offer as truly their best offer. If a vendor throws out a high cost and then lowers it, how do I know they are really offering me a real "best offer?" Some vendors like to haggle like I'm buying a used car. I'm not buying a used car; I'm buying high quality medical equipment.
Q: How do you structure the evaluation process in order to ensure consistent feedback that can be used for decision making?
FC: The process of creating a Request for Proposal helps to think through all the aspects of a bid process so that you can drill down to an apples-to-apples comparison. It's important when evaluating the purchase of mission critical medical equipment, especially when you're replacing existing equipment. You have to compare what is new and what is existing to get a true value of the proposal. It's also important to consider the age of any existing equipment that you might keep at the end of the deal, not the start of the deal. So, creating a structure that allows apples-to-apples comparison is important.
Q: When the decision is made to change vendors, what is typically the most common reason?
FC: One of the hardest things to do for a vendor is to keep a good account. One of the easiest things to do is to treat a client like a cash cow and expect their business to come back time after time. If both parties don't constantly touch base to understand the other, they form a disconnect that is insurmountable the next time the job is bid. Organizations constantly evolve. Surgical centers have undergone considerable price pressure over the last few years, and we can no longer be approached by vendors that are used to hospital pricing. Some ASC procedures are paid at a 60 percent discount for the same procedure completed in a hospital outpatient unit. Failure to understand the pricing environment in which ASCs live is probably the most common reason to change vendors. You often change vendors. You infrequently change partners.
Q: How large a part of the process is the vendor when it comes to actual implementation?
FC: New is hard. There are entire levels of relationships to build. It's a process where sales steps back and service steps forward. Good sales with bad service are a nightmare for the surgical center. For organizations the biggest problem is that we all had full time jobs before the sale was made. A successful vendor matches their needs for training with the organization's work pattern. Surgery can't stop to meet the needs of a vendor. For those of us in the business, it is incredible how many times a vendor's training or service staff expect the world to stop and revolve around them. The world revolves around the needs of my patients, not the needs of a vendor.
Q: What has your recent experience been in transitioning to Fujifilm endoscopes? Is there one single difference that distinguished them from other vendors during this process?
FC: I think it revolves around a commitment to make it work on both sides. There are a lot of vendors that once the sale was made, they would have simply moved on to the next. I never got that feeling with Fujifilm. We were never approached with an attitude that "It can't be done."
Fujifilm always looked at ways of making things work. A great example is that I have four surgery centers with a different number of rooms. With my old vendor, each center was on a different lease, which came due at different times. They could provide a low bid on one as they knew they could make it up on the next center to come due. I had the impression that instead of viewing my organization as a single account with a significant number of rooms, I was viewed as four separate accounts. When I asked the old vendor to put everything on a single lease, they refused. Fujifilm stepped in and understood the needs of my organization. That's where partnership begins to grow; listening to my needs and working out how to accomplish them. That's the kind of vendor I enjoy working with.