St. Charles Healthcare leverages OpenMarkets to streamline purchasing of ventilators, prepare for increase in COVID-19 cases
CHICAGO – March 24, 2020 – OpenMarkets, the leading online platform for buying and selling healthcare equipment, is helping health systems to ensure that they have the critical medical equipment required to treat the growing number of COVID-19 patients. The company, which works directly with both healthcare providers and suppliers, is uniquely positioned to improve access to equipment, accelerate the purchasing process, and reduce the burden on healthcare administrators who are struggling to meet the new demands of the COVID-19 crisis.
As COVID-19 cases continue to spread across the United States, countless experts have cited concerns about insufficient supplies of much-needed medical equipment like ventilators, thermometers, beds, biomed safety cabinets, viral transport mediums, and defibrillators. Ventilators, which provide oxygen and push air into the lungs of sick patients who cannot breathe on their own, have been particularly hard to find.
Oregon-based St. Charles Healthcare and a Louisiana-based academic medical center were among the many health systems looking to purchase the limited supply of ventilators. Both health systems reached out to OpenMarkets for help and were able to purchase a large volume of ventilators – which would have been much more challenging, if not impossible, to secure on their own.
“We approached OpenMarkets because our usual channels couldn’t fulfill our request for ventilators,” said Cory Hammond, Value Analysis Coordinator at St. Charles Healthcare. “We knew that OpenMarkets had a wider network and better visibility into the broader healthcare equipment market. With the support of their team and technology, we secured our ventilators in just 24 hours. Most importantly, we can put those ventilators into action to start treating patients very soon.”
While suppliers have increased production of medical equipment, availability is still limited. This scarcity, coupled with the need to pursue new purchasing strategies when go-to suppliers cannot deliver, puts increased pressure on the shoulders of busy healthcare administrators who are now tasked with trying to get connected to all of the potential suppliers and staying updated on what can be purchased on a daily or even hourly basis.
“Health systems today are facing more challenges than ever before but accessing life-saving equipment doesn’t have to be so difficult,” said Trevor Wood, CEO of OpenMarkets. “In these unprecedented times, streamlining equipment purchasing has become mission-critical to combatting the COVID-19 pandemic. Our expert team is laser-focused on making a difference not only because we know that we have the ability to do so but also because there are so many lives to be saved. We’re ready and able to help more health systems so they can help more patients as quickly as possible.”
