- Sep 15, 2021
An essential component of the medical sales cycle is the procurement of hospital equipment and supplies. Medical professionals require smooth availability of hospital services and materials to ensure all emergency, and general care functions are met successfully.
However, how exactly do healthcare professionals gain access to all the necessary equipment? Through hospital procurement.
An effective hospital procurement process will take care of the patients’ needs in the appropriate quantity with on-time delivery. If you are looking to sell your product or hospital equipment, in-depth knowledge about the hospital procurement process is a must.
Looking to learn more about the hospital procurement process? This is just the blog for you.
What is Hospital Procurement?
The process of gaining access to affordable and high-quality medical equipment, goods, and services is known as hospital procurement. The best way to ensure smooth hospital procurement is to lay down clear operative commissioning rules.
Smooth hospital procurement also requires monetary resources and uninterrupted financing.
For example, a study conducted in early 2021 indicated that nearly 56.5% of pharmaceutical companies set a higher limit for their 2020 budget when compared to their 2019 budget.
Another essential component of hospital procurement is constant communication with the Value Analysis Team (VAT). This team comprises stakeholders who play a role in procuring hospital goods and equipment.
Hospital procurement is a huge business that involves high costs. As early as 2012, hospitals were spending between $4 million and $78 million with distributors and sellers alone. Money spent on manufacturers went up to almost $150 million. To draw the most benefit from this lucrative market, you will need to familiarize yourself with the hospital procurement process.
Hospital Procurement: What You Need to Know
MedicoReach offers the best ways to approach hospitals to sell your medical equipment by creating customized hospital procurement email lists.
Here is a systematic guide that will take you through the hospital procurement process.
Step 1—Data Collection
The first step necessitates collection of documents and data like white papers, budget plans, relevant company contacts, and similar documentation. This step is important to prepare the groundwork for the further steps in the procurement process.
Step 2—Negotiation
Two factors are extremely important in the entire hospital procurement process – physician satisfaction and patient outcome.
But, as a marketer you have to also keep in mind that your service has to be reliable and provided at a competitive price.
Correlating your product’s value with the quoted price is an essential step in convincing hospitals and medical professionals that your product is worth the money. Ensure that you are familiar with the potential impact of your product or service on customers.
The hospital will follow these steps in the procurement process. Ensure that your interests align with theirs at every step of the way.
Step 3—Trial and Test
Before hospitals sign a contract to buy your products, they will run it through an initial trial round to estimate its effectiveness. When your product is being tested, you may want to offer it at a discounted price so that doctors and professionals will take an interest in your service.
For instance, based on current trial rounds and testing trends, North America is expected to show the maximum growth within the forecast period (2018-2025). The growth of the healthcare supply chain depends on the success of trial rounds and hospitals’ subsequent willingness to buy your product or service.
However, during the test period, use the time you have to inform the target consumer market (healthcare professionals) about the best features of your product and why it would be an asset to the hospital.
Step 4—Wrapping Up
The Value Analysis Team (VAT) will focus on two significant elements during the hospital procurement process – improving patient outcomes and reducing waste. In other words, is the product or service you are selling beneficial to patients without adding to hospital waste?
As a salesperson, you will need to address these issues before selling your product and ensure that they do not come in the way of the hospital procurement process when the VAT undertakes it.
Hospitals do not decide if they want to purchase your product or not based on cost alone, but also clinical assessments that consider whether your product or service does what it claims to do.
Hence, it is important to market the product for its inherent value rather than its cost. This means that you need to conduct thorough research and understand the specific requirements of every hospital that you are targeting. An email list comes in handy for this purpose!
What Should You Avoid During the Hospital Procurement Process?
Now you know how to undertake the hospital procurement process in a smooth and reliable manner. However, there are certain hurdles that you should watch out for. The hospital procurement process ultimately decides the quality of services that a hospital offers to its patients.
Keeping that in mind, here are a few issues that you want to stay away from during the hospital procurement process:
- Focusing too much on the cost and charging an obscene amount for the product without justification for its value.
- Not preparing a hospital procurement email list beforehand.
- Not having thorough knowledge about the goods and services and how they will benefit the hospital.
- Being unaware of the hospital’s niche requirements and services and how your product aligns with that.
- Not following a clear and structured selling strategy.
- Not paying attention to the hospital’s needs and keeping only your best interests at heart.
Final Words
An effective hospital procurement process requires you to know all the ins and outs of your target customers so that you can offer your best services to them. This means that you need to conduct in-depth research to know more about your potential customers.
If you want to know everything about your customers’ healthcare needs, you may invest in a hospital procurement email list. Keep in mind that trial rounds for some hospitals may continue for several months, and you will have to plan your business strategy according to each hospital’s requirements.
We hope that this article answered all your questions on the hospital procurement process!
