RamaOnHealthcare May 9, 2024
Optimizing a Broken Healthcare Supply Chain
Today, RamaOnHealthcare talks with Dan Crittenden, the CEO and Co-Founder of RevMed. RevMed is a platform connecting healthcare facilities across the United States through a secure marketplace that allows them to purchase critical supplies, monetize excess inventory, and save money.
Dan Crittenden, CEO and Co-Founder of RevMed
RamaOnHealthcare (ROH): What would you say to those considering a career in Healthcare Leadership today?
Dan Crittenden (DC): Go for it! Healthcare is a massive industry doing a lot of great things for society. It is highly rewarding knowing that your contributions every day are genuinely helping people. Given the sheer magnitude of this industry, there are a vast amount of employment opportunities within. I’m convinced just about anyone can find a rewarding career they will enjoy in healthcare.
I’m convinced just about anyone can find a rewarding career they will enjoy in healthcare.
ROH: What do you see are the biggest challenges in healthcare today?
DC: In my opinion, profitability, and the lack thereof, within healthcare is the single most important challenge healthcare providers face.
Wage and supply inflation remain persistent, and at the same time, insurance reimbursements are becoming much more perplexing. If providers can’t keep their lights on, how can they focus on providing world-class care to patients who need it?
ROH: How has technology impacted your perspective within healthcare today and what do you anticipate that will be like in five years?
DC: If designed and implemented with providers in mind, I think technology can help reduce much of the waste produced by the healthcare system, making it more efficient and reducing costs for both hospitals and patients.
…technology can help reduce much of the waste produced by the healthcare system….
The RevMed Marketplace is a platform allowing providers to offload equipment and supplies to other providers who need them. The more tailored and straightforward our technology makes it for providers to offload and purchase equipment, the more likely health systems and hospitals are to adopt the platform and participate in creating a robust secondhand market for medical supplies. Providers are already stretched extremely thin. If an innovation in healthcare technology relating to the supply chain is going to be effective, it must make the lives of providers easier.
ROH: How has your organization impacted healthcare and what do you foresee for the future?
DC: At RevMed, our mission is to help facilities save money by improving the healthcare supply chain. We believe excess medical supplies and unused equipment are a gold mine hiding in plain sight. If mined correctly, it could bring retain significant amounts of precious money within healthcare systems. As it stands, there is no robust secondhand market for healthcare providers to buy and sell medical supplies and capital goods. Options for hospitals and surgery centers to offload medical supplies they no longer need are limited and often are not worth the effort. Liquidators offer pennies
on the dollar for supplies. Other options include donating the items or dumping them after they expire.
RevMed has created a revolutionary online marketplace where providers can connect directly with one another and offload items they don’t need while recouping some of the cost and buying necessary supplies at a fair price. This development of a secondhand market can help the healthcare industry mitigate some of the medical supply waste costing the industry billions of dollars, as reported by ProPublica. Reducing the enormous amount of waste the healthcare industry creates will lower costs for the system and ultimately patients. Creating an easy and beneficial system for providers to obtain functional used equipment at a fair market value will permit them to spend more time focusing on delivering excellent care. Keeping perfectly good medical devices and equipment out of landfills also stands to positively impact the environment.
Reducing the enormous amount of waste the healthcare industry creates will lower costs for the system and ultimately patients.
ROH: As healthcare is undergoing constant change in all sectors and directions, how do you interact with other organizations and concerns to best understand the bigger picture?
DC: Like the landscape of the healthcare industry itself, the healthcare supply chain is complex with many moving parts and organizations involved. It was important for RevMed to not only create a platform where providers can connect and save money, but also be a partner and understand the pain points that each hospital is facing regarding medical supplies. RevMed has a team of Area Managers in every major market where we operate to ensure users receive the kind of support they need, as well as avoid creating unnecessary work.
It was important for RevMed to not only create a platform where providers can connect and save money, but also be a partner….
It’s also important to understand why dead stock is accumulating in facilities. It can be difficult for facilities to forecast supply needs accurately. Doctors often move from facility to facility, product preferences change, and there are cost incentives to buy in bulk. All of this contributes to a buildup of excess inventory.
Additionally, many providers don’t have a comprehensive system to track excess inventory waste, so it’s difficult to pinpoint the true scale of supplies discarded each year. To alleviate all the pain points in the healthcare supply chain and truly make it as efficient as possible, the tracking and management of inventory is also something that needs to be addressed by facilities and the healthcare industry.
…many providers don’t have a comprehensive system to track excess inventory waste….
ROH: What does your future vision of healthcare look like?
DC: Ultimately, we’d like to see providers have more time freed up to focus on improved patient outcomes. Many of the problems facing the healthcare industry were exacerbated during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and hospitals are still struggling to return to maintainable margins. We identified the secondhand market for surgical supplies and equipment was inadequately serviced and saw an opportunity to reduce supply chain costs in the industry. We are continuing to work to help the healthcare industry produce less waste and overall be more accessible and equitable for everyone.
We identified the secondhand market for surgical supplies and equipment was inadequately serviced and saw an opportunity to reduce supply chain costs in the industry.
ROH: What are the biggest challenges, opportunities, and potential issues?
DC: The healthcare industry faces multifaceted challenges, including rising costs, supply chain disruptions, and environmental concerns. Supply cost is a huge spend; the second largest cost for hospitals behind labor costs. This also provides a huge opportunity for the healthcare industry to save money while reducing waste.
RevMed’s Co-Founder is Dr. Andrew Dold, an orthopedic surgeon. He realized the problem of excess inventory in hospitals during his fellowship at NYU. He asked for some suture anchors to practice with and was promptly handed about 10 boxes of the supplies—worth around $1,000 a box. The staff was more than happy to offload the supplies that were only a fraction of the mountain of overstock supplies taking up room in the hospital’s storage. He couldn’t believe that hospitals had such an excess of items, and that they would happily part with thousands of dollars of unexpired supplies.
RevMed’s platform addresses these issues head-on by providing a solution that mitigates financial strain on healthcare providers and promotes sustainability and efficiency. Sometimes in the health tech space, it can be challenging to obtain the approval of large health systems. Convincing these systems to adopt and integrate new tech into their operations can be a long process. If the solution alleviates pain points hospitals are facing, then ultimately everyone benefits. As many hospitals don’t track expired and wasted supplies, they are often not aware of how much money is being lost to waste. It can be challenging to offer a solution to a problem some providers are not aware of. Once they realize how much savings they may recoup from their supply spend, adoption becomes much easier.
As many hospitals don’t track expired and wasted supplies, they are often not aware of how much money is being lost to waste.
ROH: How is the industry of healthcare changing regarding access, equity, delivery, personalization, etc.?
DC: I believe addressing the medical supply waste system in the healthcare industry will be one aspect of moving the industry to be more accessible and equitable. Perfectly good supplies and equipment can be provided to facilities in need of them rather than being thrown away. Through a secondary market for medical supplies, hospitals, and providers particularly those in rural areas, can obtain and make great use of the supplies and critical equipment they have previously been unable to acquire and at a lower cost.
Perfectly good supplies and equipment can be provided to facilities in need of them rather than being thrown away.
The evolving landscape of healthcare is marked by a growing emphasis on access, equity, and personalized care. RevMed plays a pivotal role in enhancing access to essential medical supplies by democratizing the procurement process. By facilitating a peer-to-peer resale market, RevMed promotes equity and affordability while empowering healthcare providers to tailor care to needs of the individual patient.
ROH: How is your organization preparing for furthering disruptive change within the industry?
DC: RevMed is constantly working to improve and expand the platform to reach more hospitals and health systems. The larger the secondary market for medical equipment and supplies is, the more effective it will be for moving supplies from provider to provider. Integrations and/or partnerships with existing order management systems are major features we’d like to integrate to help further optimize the broken supply chain. We are also looking to develop proactive software solutions that seamlessly integrate with the RevMed marketplace. This will help providers identify excess inventory before it is too late and becomes a complete write-off. This will be a key focus in the future. These integrations will be crucial to best address the problem of supply waste.
About Daniel Crittenden
Daniel has a diverse educational background including a BSc. in Computer Science from McGill University followed by the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. Prior to RevMed, Daniel was CFO of one of the family office investments, taking it from seed-stage to over 140 employees, $30M Revenue run rate and positive cash flow in under three years. Daniel has a passion for turning ideas into reality and is excited to prove this with RevMed.