MEDICAL DEVICE MANUFACTURERS
Selling to Hospitals: Running a Medical Device Business
Your device has been trialled in a hospital for two months, the clinician likes it, and the purchase committee still has not met. Meanwhile your distributor is asking for a better margin and the hospital accounts office is paying invoices from last year.
Our work is commercial. We look at how you cost and price, how distributors are picked and managed, how each hospital sale is tracked, and how cash comes in. Managers are coached to run the routines. Licensing, clinical claims and approvals belong with qualified regulatory professionals.
Discuss your priorities ↗COMMON CHALLENGES
The pressures
we often see.
- 01The buyer is a committee of clinician, purchase, finance and sometimes a trustee, so one enthusiastic doctor does not mean an order.
- 02Distributors hold the hospital relationship and the stock, and the maker often does not know what is sitting in their godown or what they quote.
- 03Pricing includes compliance costs, sterile or special packaging and traceability records, which are easily left out when a quote is built from the production cost alone.
- 04Trial units are sent out freely and tracked loosely, so nobody can say how many are still in hospitals or what happened after.
- 05Government and trust hospitals pay slowly and in batches, which strains working capital for a small manufacturer.
OUR FOCUS AREAS
Where the work
usually starts.
- 01A sales pipeline by hospital showing the clinician, purchase contact, budget holder and next committee date
- 02Distributor agreements: margin, stock held, payment terms, territory and who handles complaints
- 03Cost per unit including packaging, batch record effort, sterilisation or testing and warranty replacement
- 04A trial unit register with hospital, date sent, expected return and status
- 05Service and replacement cost per device sold, kept separate from production cost
- 06Receivables by hospital and by distributor with the oldest invoice shown first
- 07Raw component suppliers and the single points of failure among them
- 08The roles of sales, quality, dispatch and accounts when a complaint arrives
START THIS WEEK
Things you can do
before you call anyone.
- List every hospital where a trial is running or ended. Beside each, write who decides, when the committee next sits and what the clinician has said in writing. Blank cells show where you are guessing.
- Ask each distributor for current stock by batch and the last three prices quoted. Compare this with your own dispatch records. Differences are the first conversation to have with them.
- Hypothetical example: a unit costs ₹800 to make. Packaging and testing add ₹90 and a warranty reserve adds ₹40. A distributor margin of 25 per cent on a ₹1,300 price leaves you ₹560, not ₹500 over cost as you assumed.
A PRACTICAL ENGAGEMENT
Start with the priorities
that matter most.
We begin by understanding how your business runs today, find the gaps, and agree the scope in writing. Recommendations are shaped around your team, your resources and your goals.
- A hospital pipeline sheet with decision-makers, committee dates and next steps
- A distributor scorecard covering stock, payments, complaints and orders over a quarter
- A pricing sheet that carries packaging, testing, warranty and distributor margin into the final rate
- A trial unit tracker and a monthly receivables review for owner and accounts
Not the right fit when: Look elsewhere first if you need help with approvals, clinical evidence or a product safety issue. A regulatory consultant or clinician should lead on those, and we would work afterwards on the business routines.
Explore a business audit ↗LET’S MOVE YOUR BUSINESS FORWARD
