Providence Express Care is a Pacific Northwest network of urgent care clinics connected to the large Providence St. Joseph Health group. The urgent care clinics give patients access to care without spending all day in an emergency room or waiting for a last-minute doctor’s appointment. Because Providence Express Care is linked to a large medical group, patients can easily access additional services such as advanced imaging and ongoing monitoring.
With fourteen busy clinics up and running, easily accessing inventory and knowing precisely what to reorder could not matter more to the team at Providence Express Care.
The company had no previous inventory process
Although affiliated with a huge healthcare provider, this group of low-acuity clinics operates relatively independently.
“For us, a single leadership team is managing clinics that are spread across approximately 170 miles,” said Brittany, Providence Express Care’s clinical operations manager.
“It’s really important for us to be able to track the supplies without having to physically be at the location. And we share supplies between different locations so we felt that it was really important that we find some kind of platform to keep track of those.”
With no inventory system in place whatsoever, Brittany scoured the internet for a good solution to her company’s challenges.
Said Brittany, “I looked at a few different programs, tried them and it just was not at all what I was looking for. They were either too complicated or they didn’t have the functions that I wanted. And then I didn’t need a bunch of other functions but the ones that I needed, I needed badly.”
One big reason Providence Express Care needed to get organized ASAP? Clinics were running out of essential supplies and either mistakenly over-ordering the wrong items or asking a neighboring clinic’s employee to drop what they were doing and drive over the supplies.
“That isn’t sustainable,” said Brittany.
Now, Providence Express Care relies on Sortly to order the right supplies and better serve its patients
Since the company’s supply provider makes it hard to differentiate products, rushed employees were hurriedly ordering large quantities of the wrong, non-returnable items. Now, Brittany’s team uses the custom fields in Sortly to detail every item’s order number.
“Having the order number attached to each item, along with a picture, has been a game-changer for the clinics,” said Brittany. “Our clinics know what they’re getting when they place orders now. And for the clinic that’s been on Sortly the longest, ordering mistakes have been virtually eliminated. That saves us thousands of dollars.”
Another Sortly feature the clinics love: customizable expiration dates. That gives Brittany the opportunity to redistribute soon-to-expire supplies amongst all 14 clinics to reduce waste.
Brittany also found that Sortly’s intuitive functionality made training not-so-tech-savvy colleagues simple and easy.
Most importantly, integrating Sortly into daily operations has allowed the clinics to redirect their attention toward their patients.
Says Brittany, “Even though supplies are so integral to our work, they are not our focus. Our focus is on the patient.”
About Sortly
Sortly is a super simple inventory and asset tracking system that enables you to visually track all your items and any of their details including quantity, price, condition, notes, location, and more—for a more intuitive way for your team to track your inventory across multiple locations.
Unlike other inventory tracking systems, you won’t need any lengthy sales visits or a 100-page guide to figure out Sortly. It’s built so you can have up and running in minutes, all on your own. It’s time to say goodbye to lost assets, complicated spreadsheets and time-consuming “solutions” so you can spend less time inventorying and more time building your business.
Try Sortly for free today for 14 days!
