Dental office inventory?

Question

How do you handle inventory and ordering in your dental office? This is an odd way to have a discussion (and it cost me ten points - haha), but maybe we could all benefit from comparing notes.

I buy 95% from Patterson. Choose one supplier and don't bother bargain hunting. I heard years ago to check prices on your top ten consumed items ONLY and forget about the rest. The percent of practice overhead is so minimal if you save $3.00 on a box of x-ray film that it is not worth taking time - or paying someone - to compare prices. Loyalty will get you lower pricing structure with most dealers anyway, so the savings realized by splitting your order between 3 or 4 major suppliers goes away if you are a "Plus" customer for loyalty.

Answer 1

We don't really keep inventory in our office. When someone takes the next to last of something, they are suppose to write it down in my "to order book" and I go from there; at least, that's how it's suppose to work in my office. What usually happens is someone will tell me that we're out of something and how fast can "I" get it here. I used to do 95% of my ordering through Accubite but since Patterson shut them down (in a real crappy way from what I understand from my rep) I do 90% of my ordering through Darby Dental now (where my Accubite rep went to) and I still get the loyalty pricing that I got through Accubite. I wish I had one of those scanner things; that would save me sooo much time.

Answer 2

Hi Dr. Sam-don't mean to intrude on your question, but you no longer have e-mail access and I wanted to respond to something you wrote a month ago: "You can generally count on getting decent work at a dental school, but be aware that one school is probably not hugely different than another. You WILL be treated by students and their abilities vary greatly. You might want to see if you can get a senior student instead of one who has never worked on live people before. I had some classmates that I really respected and others who I wouldn't trust with my dog.

Source(s):

I used to be a dental student."

I wanted to tell you that I really lucked out-got a fantastic dental "student" And I am the one who voted for your answer so you ought to be getting ten points soon. By the way, you only lose 5 points when you ask a question and get three back when you pick your best answer-so, it's worth it.

Answer 3

In my practice, we use a scanner system which links to an online ordering system. Patterson, Sullivan-Schien, and a few other big companies offer this service. I've found it's more cost effective to go through a major supplier than to pay an assistant to browse through catalogues looking for bargain prices.

Our rep is terrific and if we happen to run out of anything, he goes and picks it up for us at their distribution point. We're lucky to live in a major city, though, where things are accessible.

For those who do not take kindly to computer ordering, the old "pull-tag" system seems to work well.

I tend not to get involved with the back-office ordering process as long as it's running smoothly. Only when the budget keeps running over or when assistants are complaining do I stick my nose in.

Answer 4

I work for a 3+million $ a year practice and primarily we order the majority of all prod. thru Burkhart,(they beat Patterson) our Burkhart rep. has set us up on a tag system .
Every product has a inventory tag assigned to it .the tag has all the needed info - prod. name, amount to be ordered, date last ordered etc. When product is rec. and stored the tag is placed on the product itself. We pull from the supply closet from left to right , say we get 20 cavi wipes in , the tag is placed on #15 whoever take the 15th one in line they pull the tag and place it in the"to be ordered file" that hangs on our supply closet door.Their are 3 files 1 for asst. 1 for hyg and 1 for prod. ordered and not rec. yet. The rep comes once a week gathers all the tags and places our order.We do however still have to order specialty items endo, implant, ortho etc. from other sources, but still done in the tag method. it took us a while to get used to the method,but if everyone does their part it's easy to control inventory. We think the time spent on bargain shopping to save a few penny's is time lost producing dentistry Hope this helps

Answer 5

We have a lab manager that orders supplies. We tell her what we need and she bargin shops. We usually order from Atlanta dental or Island dental, which I think may have been bought out, not sure. We would order from sullivan shein if we needed something the next day but they tend to be more expensive.

Answer 6

Henry Schein has the most comprehensive online ordering system available. Whether you order using their barcode scanning device or chose to type in the product that you re looking for using the simplistic search field you will easily find what you re looking for. From my experience working in the dental office and doing the ordering, I found the tagging system worked the very best whether it was a large or smaller sized office.

Answer 7

I am in charge of the ordering. The dentist usually doesn't question what I buy. Well he did one time. He saw a print out reciept that I printed online from Patterson and saw that it said "Headrest cover" and was like $50.00. He started complaining and asked me why I bought a headrest for $50.00. (DUH?!?!?!?) After I pointed out the word "cover" and that there were like 250 in the box, he said "Oh." I told him that was why I did the ordering, cause if he did it there is no telling what we would get.

Anyways, I really do not inventory anything. I order when I need something. Patterson gets stuff to me in 1 business day, so I usually don't have to worry about running out of anything. If I notice that we have something that we aren't using or havent used in a while, I ask the dentist if it is something that he just has to have, or can we stop ordering it any longer.

I guess he trusts me, cause he usually just keeps quite and lets me do my job. I try to buy the most cost effective items from Patterson. I used to use Accubite, but as I am sure you know, Patterson bought them out. I usually don't price compare, cause I don't have time to worry about that petty stuff. If I have to spend 10 minutes trying to get the best deal on c-fold towels, then I have too much time on my hands.

Answer 8

get a computerized inventory control program. it will take a while to input all the data , but in the long run, it will be much faster and efficient.

Answer 9

Sorry we have experienced the same problem, so one of our docs finally switched brands.