Inventory Archives

Holiday Infusion Medication Shipping Delays

Its the most wonderful time of the year! …unless you are in charge of ordering infusion medication and medical supplies for your patients. 🙂

This is a courtesy reminder to all of our blog readers that normal expectations for medication and medical supply deliveries should be moderated to include delays caused by increased holiday shipping. For those offices who like to run their “just-in-time” inventory at one-day to same-day availability, we would advise them to consider increasing their days on hand of inventory an extra day or two in consideration of these expected delays.

Black Friday, Amazon, the start of winter weather […] Read more

Infusion Center Trends & Takeaways from the 2016 Magellan Rx Report

At WeInfuse, we think the annual Magellan Trend Reports are manna from heaven. This year’s report is no different, and it’s full of gold nuggets that prove the physician / provider-based Infusion Center is the optimal site of care providing patients quality, convenient and cost-effective care. Whether you operate a sstand-aloneInfusion Center or provide infusions as a part of your practice, the entire report is a MUST read.

How can you use this years report?

Use it when advocating for your Infusion Center and the delivery channel at large
Use it to negotiate with your payers for better rates since Infusion Centers are the […] Read more

TempAlert Product Review

A few weeks ago we wrote about the importance of monitoring temperatures for infusion medications. I hate to propose problems without solutions so in this post we will be telling you about our experience with one of the best solutions we found to the temperature monitoring problem. In this post, we will review the TempAlert wireless monitoring system. I ran across the TempAlert system about 6 months ago while doing some research for our IV Insights Blog post on managing and monitoring medication inventories. I spoke to a representative at TempAlert who was kind enough to send us a demo […] Read more

Infusion Medication Monitoring Considerations

I have visited many practices and Infusion Centers that have gone to great lengths to protect their facilities from would be intruders – installing special locks, key fobs, and various alarm and surveillance equipment. While it is important to physically secure items in your facilities, theft of property is not what should keep most of you up at night. In any single day, many of you carry somewhere between $50,000 and $500,000 of medications in your infusion medication inventories. The biggest likely threat to this expensive inventory is not theft, but destruction caused by nature or negligence.

You might find it […] Read more

Is Your Infusion Center Leaking Cash?

In the past few months, I have asked practices and practice managers all over the country to do a simple test to see if their in-office Infusion Centers are leaking money. I ask them to secretly remove a single vial of expensive medication from their inventory and then see how long it takes someone on their staff to notice the missing vial.

The test is a dead simple way of checking one of the most fundamental systems every Infusion Center must have which is inventory reconciliation. If your Infusion Center is not reconciling purchased inventory against billed patient claims and against […] Read more

Buying or Upgrading your Infusion Center Refrigerator

When was the last time you did the math on the dollars worth of infusion medication inventory in your practice? If you’re like most providers, you likely have 10’s to 100’s of thousands of dollars of temperature controlled inventory occupying the very small and fragile square footage of your infusion center refrigerator. In this post, we are discussing some of the practical steps that providers can take to minimize loss and properly monitor temperature controlled medications in their offices.

At one point in the not so distant past, I was responsible for a daily inventory of over $1.2 million dollars […] Read more

“Specialty Pharmacy Only” in your Infusion Center

In previous posts, we have discussed the merits of both Buy&Bill and Specialty Pharmacy inventory strategies for your office Infusion Center. If you missed our previous writings, you should take a moment to read our previous posts for some context To Buy&Bill or not to Buy&Bill and Specialty Pharmacy is your friend. If you are brand new to infusion or have been providing infusions in your office for many years, the strategies you choose to manage your inventory will have a profound impact both on your office team and your bottom line.

In a previous post, we highlighted the opportunities in the […] Read more

Specialty Pharmacy is your friend…sometimes

I have a “like” (never love) and “hate” relationship with Specialty Pharmacies. Likewise, there are infusion providers that wouldn’t accept a Specialty Pharmacy shipment under any condition and others who wouldn’t Buy&Bill a medication if it cost more than $20 a vial.

Our last post provided a brief overview of both Buy&Bill and Specialty Pharmacy (“SpecRx”) strategies for the in-office or stand-alone Infusion Center provider. In that writing, we mostly focused on why and when you should consider a Buy&Bill inventory strategy to leverage your practice profitability. If you missed it, take a moment to read our previous post To […] Read more

To Buy&Bill or not to Buy&Bill…it’s a profit question

Rapid changes in commercial medication reimbursements, the uncertainty of Medicare payment policies, and an influx of new biologic and specialty medications have many providers re-thinking their medication inventory strategies in an effort to balance or avoid risk while continuing to provide their patients access to infusible and injectable medications in their office-based Infusion Centers. This series of posts will look at the differences in these inventory strategies and address the merits of each in an effort to help providers better understand and think about which combination of strategies best fits the needs of their practice and patients.

Infusion Center providers […] Read more