What are the best practices for assessing medical device vendors?

1 Define your criteria

Before you start evaluating vendors, you need to define your criteria for selecting and monitoring them. Your criteria should be based on your organization's goals, needs, and priorities, as well as regulatory requirements and industry standards for medical devices. Common criteria include product quality and reliability, customer service and support, pricing and contract terms, delivery and inventory management, innovation and technology, compliance and certification, and reputation and references. Assigning weights to each criterion to reflect its relative importance, as well as creating a scoring system to rank vendors objectively, can help you make an informed decision.

2 Conduct due diligence

Once you have your criteria, you need to conduct due diligence on your potential and current vendors. This process involves verifying the information and claims that vendors provide, as well as gathering additional data and feedback from various sources. To do this, you can review vendor websites, brochures, and presentations; request product samples, demos, and trials; check vendor credentials, certifications, and accreditations; ask for customer testimonials, case studies, and references; visit vendor facilities and observe their processes; perform audits and inspections; evaluate vendor performance and quality metrics. It is essential to document your findings and compare them with your criteria and expectations.

4 Monitor and review

The final step in assessing medical device vendors is to monitor and review their performance and quality over time. Monitoring involves tracking and measuring vendor activities and outcomes, such as delivery, service, quality, and satisfaction. Reviewing entails analyzing and evaluating vendor results and impacts, such as cost, value, risk, and improvement. To do this effectively, you can establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and quality standards, collect and analyze data and reports, conduct surveys and interviews, perform audits and inspections, identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, recognize and reward vendor achievements, implement corrective and preventive actions. It is important to document your monitoring and review processes and outcomes so that you can share them with your vendors. By following these best practices for assessing medical device vendors, healthcare organizations can be sure to choose the best vendors for their needs.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?