In my job, I get the exciting opportunity to bring community members, stakeholders, and vendors to our campus for tours. Presenting our company to new people is always exciting. To cover all bases, I usually start my introduction with: here is what we do, why we do it, and how.
Careful to not use too many technical terms, I take my audience through examples of why our activity is needed and which organizations we serve. We always go over the advantages that our services offer, and why we care about creating and upholding high standards. They are often flabbergasted; “I never knew how much waste the healthcare industry creates,” is a phrase often uttered.
It is a shocking fact: a majority of US hospitals and surgery centers throw away perfectly usable surgical disposable supplies every year. Why? Because these items have a pre-determined shelf life, and an expiration date past which sterility is not guaranteed. This waste happens for a number of reasons — surgeons’ preference of item/brand changes, scheduled surgeries get canceled, contract minimums must be fulfilled, new technology launches, etc. The good news is: this waste can be avoided.
In 1997, rich with some experience in medical device sales, and after seeing the aforementioned waste with his own two eyes, Randy Ware founded West Coast Medical Resources. For over 25 years, WestCMR has helped domestic hospitals and surgery centers’ materials management departments monetize in-date obsolete inventory. On top of avoiding the sometimes monstrous waste, the facilities we help recoup dollars to spend on supplies they will actually use.
What this means, is that as an alternative supplier of surgical disposable supplies, we not only create vendor stability for often squeaky supply chains, but we also directly reduce the impact the entire industry has on our planet. Can you say the same of the vendors/partners you work with? We all hate waste, so it helps to be on the right side of change.