By Pete Mercer
Independent distributors are a critical piece in the overall puzzle of healthcare, streamlining the healthcare supply chain by linking manufacturers directly to providers. Equal parts flexible and scrappy, these organizations provide a much-needed service to ensure that healthcare organizations are equipped to care for their patients.
Repertoire Magazine recently spoke to Victor Amat, the president of American Medical Supplies & Equipment, about being an independent distributor, overcoming challenges, and the shifting market.
Where it started
Based in Miami, American Medical was founded in 1983 by Amat’s father and uncle. After working in the industry since 1965, they moved from Pennsylvania to Florida and decided to open their own company. They were working for Dade Medical at the time – after Dade closed its doors, they started American Medical. While his father and his uncle have since passed away, Amat (who joined the company in 1985) has loyally served as the president of American Medical since 2000.
American Medical serves primary care – physicians, clinics, Medicare Advantage HMO clinics, ancillary clinics. Amat said, “We serve the single-doc practitioner all the way up to a multi-facility Medicare Advantage Clinic and everywhere in between.”
Amat is proud of American Medical’s mission to put the customer first. With every customer interaction, his team is constantly looking to solve the problems of the customer. He said, “We do all our own installations – I do not just sell equipment and drop it off at a facility. Right now, we’re working on a project with about 30 exam rooms, so we are doing all the installation and integrated systems. Everything is a white glove service when we deliver equipment and supplies.”
Building relationships with customers is only part of the equation: American Medical also works with a variety of manufacturers to ensure that only the best products are being sourced for their customers.
Amat and his team believe in loyalty. He said, “We try to be loyal to those manufacturers that are willing to work with us, and we try to stay loyal to IMCO manufacturers. We have been a member of IMCO since 1992, which has kept us competitive with the national players and the breadth of products and manufacturers that any member would have access to.”
Preparing for disasters
Like everyone else in the industry, American Medical had to find a way to come out the other side of the pandemic. In many ways, they are still working through the fallout of the pandemic with their customers.
“I think the uncertainty of everything is keeping them up at night,” Amat said. “During the pandemic, we talked to a few of our customers about stockpiling, which some of them had the warehousing space to have some type of safety stock, the three-to-six-month supply of some of their PPE equipment in case this happens again.”
As for American Medical, current events are enough to keep Amat up at night. When he joined the company, 90% of the products that they sourced were American made. Now, that arrangement has flipped to where 80% of their products are now made overseas. For a smaller and independent distributor, Amat said that their biggest pain point is “expenses that are beyond our control.”
With the rising cost of liability insurance, vehicle and truck insurance, and healthcare insurance, it’s sometimes overwhelming to try and stay afloat in today’s market. Regulatory enforcement has put his team in a spot where they are investing in technology and software to be compliant.
If all of that were not enough, American Medical is also based in Miami, which means that they must plan for hurricane season every year. “Our building has been hit by a hurricane twice. Hurricane Irma kind of took the roof off the building in 2005. For our disaster plan, we tarp the inside of our building so that if the roof is compromised, everything inside remains dry.”
American Medical’s servers have moved to the cloud, instead of hosting everything on site. This will allow them to resume operations much more quickly if their building is hit by another hurricane.
The advantages of being an independent distributor
For Amat and American Medical, operating in the independent distributor space gives them an opportunity to serve their customers on their own terms. The freedom to be able to make your own decisions in this industry is rare, and it allows Amat and his team to come up with creative solutions to complex problems.
“We can change company policy by sticking my head out of my office and letting people know what we’re doing now. There isn’t a lot of red tape or bureaucracy – the buck stops here. We can change what or how we do things on a dime,” Amat said.
That idea of independence is not about making reckless decisions but meeting the needs of the customers without that red tape that larger organizations usually have to navigate. “We are flexible to each customer’s needs. Things that we do for one customer, we can change how we do them for another customer. There are customers that have certain requirements when you deliver products, and we have been flexible enough to have different delivery requirements for each customer. It’s what differentiates us from the nationals.”
Amat said ultimately it is the people of American Medical who have allowed the independent distributor to successfully navigate everything from hurricanes to pandemics, and market disruptions in between.
“I have people that have worked for me for close to 30 years and have people that are as young as we hired them four months ago, and everywhere in between,” he said. “If we treat people right and you lead them, they’ll stick around. I think everyone needs leadership at one point or another – it’s not always about dollars, it’s about how you treat people.”