Lightening the Supply Chain Load

For many physician offices and urgent care clinics the term “supply chain” can feel like an abstract concept. Because they are often lean operations, there’s rarely a dedicated staff member or team overseeing procurement and inventory. Instead, clinical or front-desk staff take on supply tasks between patients and paperwork — a juggling act that can quietly drive up costs, reduce operational efficiency, and contribute to staff burnout.

In a landscape where every minute and every dollar count, smaller practices face a unique challenge: how to manage the medical supply chain with limited time, training, and visibility.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. By making a few simple process changes, partnering closely with suppliers, and embracing fundamental inventory strategies, even resource-strapped practices can bring order to the chaos, without adding headcount.

Understanding the resource gap

Most physician offices operate without formal supply chain infrastructure. There are often no directors of operations or inventory managers, etc. Instead, supply orders are often handled by whoever has a free moment — whether that’s a nurse, medical assistant or receptionist.

“It’s almost always an all-hands-on-deck approach,” says Jonathan Lopresti, Medline senior director of supply chain optimization. “We’ve seen MAs managing inventory, placing orders, receiving deliveries, even checking expiration dates — all on top of their clinical responsibilities.”

The result is an environment where each site operates independently. Even within the same group, one location might be ordering daily from multiple vendors, while another places bulk orders on a weekly or even monthly basis. This variability drives up complexity, reduces negotiating leverage, and makes it nearly impossible to assess true inventory needs.

Adding to the challenge, few of these practices track inventory levels formally. There are no reorder points or PAR levels. And if there are, often the PAR levels live in someone’s head, making it extremely difficult when backfilling or bringing on new team members.

Common pain points for physician offices

This decentralized, ad hoc approach creates ripple effects:

• Overstocking and stockouts: Without defined PAR levels or real-time tracking, many practices fall into the trap of over-ordering to avoid stockouts. “Often facilities tend to order excessive amounts of inventory to compensate for the lack of support, processes and ,” says Lopresti. That ties up capital and leads to expired products gathering dust in storage.
• Manual, Time-Intensive Ordering: Staff often spend hours counting supplies and comparing pricing across multiple vendors. It’s not uncommon for orders to be placed without awareness of contract pricing or consolidated shipping schedules, leading to increased freight costs and delayed deliveries.
• Lack of Visibility: Without data on usage or inventory levels, practices can’t benchmark performance, identify waste, or assess how much they should be spending. “There’s no line of sight into how much they’re using or what they actually have,” Lopresti explains. “So they can’t make informed decisions, and they definitely can’t quantify ROI on investing into supply chain operations.”
• Labor Inefficiencies: Time spent on supply chain tasks takes clinicians and MAs away from patient care, increases their stress, or both. In offices with multiple locatiosn, where floaters may cover shifts across locations, inconsistent inventory setups create even more disruption. “If you walk into a room and supplies are missing or in different places, that’s time lost,” says Lopresti, “for both the provider and the patient.”

All of that means that staff’s productivity, and how quickly patients can be treated, are directly impacted by operational inefficiencies.

Step one: Establish a process

Before diving into automation or advanced technology, most practices need to start by defining a clear, standardized approach to managing inventory. This starts with a physical inventory to document every product, its quantity, and where it’s stored. Then, the team — including clinicians and administrative staff — canwork together to answer key questions:

• What items are essential to keep in each exam room?
• Which supplies can be centralized in a shared storage area?
• When should we reorder, and in what quantities?

Once this baseline is established, practices can layer in a visual inventory system like Kanban, a lean method that reduces decision-making and accelerates reordering.

The power of Kanban: simple, visual, efficient

In its most common form in healthcare, Kanban uses a two-bin system. Each item is split into two containers, each holding half the PAR level. When the first bin is emptied, it’s moved to a designated area to signal it’s time to reorder. “You’re no longer spending hours counting 300 items each time you need to replenish a supply room,” says Lopresti. “Now it’s a five-minute task.”

This system ensures the practice’s inventory is in a sweet spot — not too much, not too few —and empowers all staff to play a role without adding complexity. “It takes the decision-making out of the process,” says Lopresti. “Clinicians just move the bin. Whoever places the orders knows exactly what’s needed.”

Kanban also solves a core challenge in healthcare: the lack of depletion data. Unlike retail, where every sale reduces on-hand inventory, healthcare rarely tracks when items are used. Kanban provides a visual signal for when an order needs to be placed.

Start small, then scale

In its most common form in healthcare, Kanban uses a two-bin system. Each item is split into two containers, each holding half the PAR level. When the first bin is emptied, it’s moved to a designated area to signal it’s time to reorder. “You’re no longer spending hours counting 300 items each time you need to replenish a supply room,” says Lopresti. “Now it’s a five-minute task.”

This system ensures the practice’s inventory is in a sweet spot — not too much, not too few —and empowers all staff to play a role without adding complexity. “It takes the decision-making out of the process,” says Lopresti. “Clinicians just move the bin. Whoever places the orders knows exactly what’s needed.”

Kanban also solves a core challenge in healthcare: the lack of depletion data. Unlike retail, where every sale reduces on-hand inventory, healthcare rarely tracks when items are used. Kanban provides a visual signal for when an order needs to be placed.

Start small, then scale

In its most common form in healthcare, Kanban uses a two-bin system. Each item is split into two containers, each holding half the PAR level. When the first bin is emptied, it’s moved to a designated area to signal it’s time to reorder. “You’re no longer spending hours counting 300 items each time you need to replenish a supply room,” says Lopresti. “Now it’s a five-minute task.”

This system ensures the practice’s inventory is in a sweet spot — not too much, not too few —and empowers all staff to play a role without adding complexity. “It takes the decision-making out of the process,” says Lopresti. “Clinicians just move the bin. Whoever places the orders knows exactly what’s needed.”

Kanban also solves a core challenge in healthcare: the lack of depletion data. Unlike retail, where every sale reduces on-hand inventory, healthcare rarely tracks when items are used. Kanban provides a visual signal for when an order needs to be placed.

Partner with a distributor

Vendor partners can provide critical support during this transformation — especially those with dedicated non-acute teams and supply chain consulting services. “We’re not just dropping off boxes,” says Lopresti. “We’re helping customers build a foundation for supply chain operations.”

While every healthcare organization aims to deliver exceptional care, physician offices need to run efficiently. The less time staff spend hunting for supplies, or going to different sites to look for the cheapest price on a product, the more they can focus on patient care, and getting patients into exam rooms quickly and efficiently.

Reframing supply chain improvement as a tool for better business performance can help stakeholders prioritize change. And in many cases, the ROI is waiting to be uncovered.

“We know there’s stress on staff, and we know there are inefficiencies. But until you truly thake the time to understand your operations, what you have and how much, you can’t quantify it,” Lopresti says. “That’s what gives you the benchmark.”

Free up your staff, optimize your supply

Smaller practices may not have full supply chain teams, but that doesn’t mean they can’t take small steps to make big improvements. By starting with one site, defining a standard process, and leveraging supplier support, these organizations can reduce waste and better serve patients.

And by cutting down on the extra demands on staff, they can greatly improve morale and retention. The tools are simple. The results can be transformative.