It’s another typical day at your practice, your next patient arrives for his/her appointment to fill a cavity. You’re about to get started when your patient says, “I brought my composite for the filling, can you use this instead of your supply? And then deduct that material cost from my bill?”
This might sound crazy, however, in the IT world, this happens frequently with purchasing technology equipment. At-first-glance, buying your own IT equipment might seem to save you a little money. When in fact if you take a closer look, you will see that this is not a guaranteed saving if it’s not done correctly, causing you future headaches.
You probably would reject a patient’s request to use the material they bought and brought in. However, just like you, we prefer to use our vetted equipment (in your world, “material”).
The equipment we choose to work with is vetted on quality, reliability, and performance. When we recommend a piece of equipment, we aren’t just vetting it for your current practice state, but for future growth as well. We have a list of specifications for each piece of equipment, which makes matching this exact piece of equipment a little challenging when you go to buy it on your own. If you currently don’t partner with Medix, reach out to your current IT provider and ask if/how they vet the equipment they are recommending.
If you still prefer to buy your equipment, there are a few things you should know before you go shopping:
Not buying the appropriate equipment, causes a significant impact on daily functionality.
“Processor, RAM, and solid-state drive. If you don’t get the right combination of these three things, your computer will be really slow, or it won’t properly be able to handle the dental programs you need to use,” stated Christian Meyers, our Nebraska Medix Sales Representative.
Sourcing your equipment also means facilitating repair warranties with your vendors
When you invest in new technology, you expect it to last. Most vendors offer warranties, which protect your investment. To put this into perspective, say your three-year-old workstation crashed due to hardware failure. Without a warranty, this costly repair on a three-year-old station might cause you to research the price for a brand-new one. Whereas if this equipment is still under warranty, you can replace the workstation and keep it for a few more years.
When you buy your equipment, you assume the responsibility of managing all repair warranties with each vendor. When your IT provider purchases the equipment, they will read the fine print to see what is and is not covered, they will manage all your warranties, and work directly with each vendor for you.
Buying your equipment isn’t a guaranteed cost savings.
First and foremost, shopping for the right equipment is more time on your part. Ask yourself, is my hourly rate worth it? If the answer is no, then let the IT gurus do the equipment shopping. If you answered yes, please note that you more than likely increase your IT provider’s servicing time, which raises your cost. Equipment not properly vetted by an IT provider will take longer to prep because we need to create a unique configuration for it. In some cases, we remove software that is bundled with it that may cause issues.
Being a practice owner, we know wearing multiple hats has become a fine art. Our advice is to let your IT partner, be just that. A partner. Wear one less hat and let them be an active partner for you and your business.
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