Ready for What’s Next How we’re thriving in an ever-changing industry

The last few years have brought significant changes to healthcare— from telehealth and a shift toward care and recovery at home, to staffing and supply chain challenges. And these changes are just the beginning.

“We’re at a starting point, with healthcare likely to continue evolving,” said Angela Newman,

Medline senior director of clinical services. “In five years, healthcare products and processes are going to be different.”

Fortunately, Medline is uniquely prepared—globally and across divisions—to meet evolving customer needs.

“Medline operates the largest

U.S. supply chain of any medical-surgical manufacturer and distributor, and we have made significant investments to ensure the resiliency of the healthcare supply chain,” said Jim Boyle, Medline executive vice president. “We also regularly offer new and innovative clinical products and solutions—often working alongside and anticipating what our customers need in a rapidly changing environment.

“For our sales team, this is the Medline Advantage,” said Boyle. “It’s what distinguishes us from our competitors. We’re responsive and invested for the long term.”

In fact, across all areas of our business, Medline is innovating to meet current and future healthcare challenges.

Clinical solutions

While we are well known as a manufacturer and distributor of medical supplies, often considered Medline’s “best kept secret” are the innovative clinical solutions—products, assessments, education, training and support—that help customers provide optimal care.

Ongoing staff shortages have disrupted many hospital protocols, increasing healthcare-associated infections, diminishing patient outcomes and impacting providers’ performance-based reimbursement.

To help get healthcare protocols

back on track, Medline has conducted more than 1,000 clinical assessments over the past several years in three areas of care: skin health, urological and vascular.

A Medline-directed clinical assessment typically includes a short staff survey, store room review, and clinician and leadership interviews on specific protocols for a particular area of care. The information is then used to develop organization, training and process improvements.

“Medline takes an evidencebased approach to empower staff to tackle key patient safety initiatives,” said Newman. “We use best practice guidelines to make customized education and product recommendations to help staff work more consistently.”

To help stay on top of healthcare challenges and to secure feedback on new products and solutions, Medline meets regularly with its Skin Health and Infection Prevention Acute Care advisory boards. These 19 experts—WOC (wound, ostomy and continencecertified) nurses and infection preventionists—provide a lens into staffing, education, decision making, technology and quality improvement issues impacting clinicians throughout the U.S.

Last fall, after a two-year hiatus, the advisory boards met at Medline’s Northfield headquarters to discuss ongoing challenges, potential solutions and future opportunities.

They include new OptiView transparent dressings, a “once in a decade” product set to revolutionize pressure injury prevention, said Ethan Schmitt, Medline product manager. “The dressing features cutting-edge HydroCore™ technology, which provides immediate visibility to the skin without the need to lift the dressing.” OptiView redistributes peak pressure and displaces shear forces while managing microclimate on the patient’s skin.

Because OptiView is clear, busy nurses and staff can quickly assess the patient’s skin without removing the dressing, leading to less product waste and fewer unnecessary dressing changes. As a result, clinicians will gain back time to focus on providing optimal care for their patients.

“There is currently nothing like OptiView on the market,” said Schmitt.

“We have infection preventionists and WOC nurses from facilities of all sizes across the country,” said Katie Treptow, Medline senior director of marketing. “Bringing them together to have conversations about challenges gives us a tremendous amount of insight into how we can better support clinicians.”

The boards also provide input on new skin health and infection prevention products.

Medline recently unveiled several new and improved products and solutions, designed to meet the evolving skin health and infection prevention needs of patients and customers, and to ease the burden of overworked staff.

In addition, Medline has updated the packaging for Remedy Skin Care products— the market leader—with a more intuitive design and simplified instructions.

To further support nurses and other healthcare professionals, Medline

University offers more than 280 free continuing education courses in 25 categories, with more than 160 that qualify for continuing education (CE) credit. More recently, Medline University launched a Microlearning Program, providing training and information in small segments, easily accessible on phones, tablets or laptops. The initial courses address CAUTI prevention, indwelling catheters for healthcare assistants, self-care for nurses, workplace violence, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), patient-centered care for LGBTQIA+, culturally competent care and the opioid epidemic.

“For healthcare workers who are always on the go, Micorolearning courses provide quick, easily accessible information,” said Geoff Kass, Medline University director.

Medline University also is integrating games into some training programs to help reinforce protocols for busy clinicians. are prepared for surgery,” said John Verhamme, Medline senior project manager, Dynacor Division. “We provide them with capabilities to reach patients where they are, whether at home or in a postacute setting.” worked with the hospital to create patient discharge kits with five to seven days of supplies and a list of websites for securing additional products.

“During the pandemic, we were looking for innovative ways to engage our audience remotely, and we began to think outside the box about how to build confidence and information retention. As a result, we’ve been moving our activities more toward gamification models,” said Kass.

“For instance, Medline University uses scenario-based elements in their ‘Self-care for Nurses’ course that includes vending machine graphics to present benefits of self-care, a maze to navigate barriers to self-care, a reflection exercise for identifying burnout and a puzzle for achieving wellness through balance,” said Kass.

At-home care: kits, retail and e-commerce Medline also is evolving to meet patients where they are.

Today, more aging adults are choosing home care, and more patients are leaving the hospital sooner after surgery. When combined with fewer nurses and staff, there is a growing need for products and solutions that bridge the gap between the hospital, post-acute and at-home care.

Medline senior vice president, Retail Division.

Medline is the market leader in healthcare procedure kits, manufacturing over 200 million annually in North America. More recently, Medline has been working closely with healthcare systems to create custom patients kits that include pre- and post-surgical supplies and instructions to ensure a safe post-hospital transition and ideal recovery.

“Health systems want to ensure that their patients

Last year, Medline partnered with University Hospitals in the Cleveland area to create custom patient kits for nine surgical procedures. Each kit, delivered directly to a patient’s home, contains procedurespecific supplies (such as nutritional drinks, exercise aids, and body wash or wipes), and instructions for before and after surgery.

Custom kits also ensure supply continuity in products between hospital and home. Saint Francis Health System was among the first healthcare providers in eastern Oklahoma to undergo a mandated transition to a new feeding tube system. They soon realized patients would not have immediate access to the new feeding system products once they returned home. Medline

“From a hospital or caregiver perspective, we’re stretched incredibly thin,” said Newman. “These kits are important in keeping our patients safe and ensuring they go home after surgery or a hospital stay without any negative outcomes.”

Medline also offers a broad range of home healthcare products through the company’s at Home website (athome.medline.com), as well as on Amazon.com, WalMart.com and other e-commerce retail sites.

Medline-branded and Medlinemanufactured products can be found in over 115,000 retail locations throughout the U.S. They include diagnostic, mobility, incontinence, personal, respiratory and other care products.

“I love that we take care of patients throughout the continuum of care; we never leave them,” said Dawn Sicco,

For example, patients and caregivers can access Medline wound care products—the same products that are used in the hospital setting—to treat chronic conditions related to diabetes and aging.

At CVS Pharmacy locations, Medline will soon offer a new line of eight “Home Living Essentials” caregiver kits, including the “Sit Safe & Clean” bathing kit and the “Reach, Grab & Go” mobility kit. Medline also is partnering with well-known brands—such as Arm & Hammer to enhance odor control on the company’s FitRight products, and Martha Stewart to provide stylish designs and timeless sophistication on a new line of mobility and care aids.

“We’re working to meet the evolving needs of aging patients and their caregivers,” said Sicco.

To support home care agencies, Medline offers products, tools and reimbursement strategies to improve efficiencies, reimbursement and care quality, said Zach Pocklington,

Medline senior vice president. This includes delivering medical supplies directly to patient homes and working with providers to reduce costs by regularly auditing supply use and recommending more costefficient alternatives.

“We have curated the ‘how’ and ‘why’ Medline can help home health care agencies,” said Pocklington. “There are three primary themes: clinical, financial and operational.”

In addition, caregiver technological solutions, offered through Medline third-party partnerships, are helping to improve care and bridge workforce shortages. For example, a skin health app can quickly assess the size, width and depth of a patient wound and suggest appropriate products and protocols for treatment. Medline also offers telehealth patient monitoring solutions through VitalTech and patient triage through CareXM.

Supply chain and operations

To help ensure a more resilient supply chain and make sure our healthcare customers have the right products when needed, Medline has invested more than $2 billion in operations, manufacturing and information technology.

Since 2018, Medline’s Healthcare Resilience Initiative (HRI) has supported the construction of eight new distribution centers, nearly 150 manufacturing expansion projects, a new global digital customer ordering platform and other improvements.

Today, Medline’s North American operations include:

• 20 manufacturing facilities

• 50 distribution centers, totaling more than 28 million square feet, including four near the largest U.S. ports

• Over 1,600 MedTrans trucks, delivering more than threequarters of the company’s sales volume, and enabling one-day shipping to 99% of the U.S.

More recently, Medline invested $500 million in additional supply chain inventory to ensure product availability and timely delivery to healthcare providers.

“Because of our ongoing investments, if at any time we have a distribution or other site disabled—due to a natural disaster or other crisis—we have the ability to support the rest of our network and customer base,” said Steve Miller, Medline executive vice president, supply chain.

“We’ve also invested heavily in technology and automation,” said Miller. Approximately half of the company’s distribution centers use mobile robotics, or “goods-to-person technology,” to send products directly to a team member’s workstation.

Medline operates the largest owned transportation fleet of any healthcare product distributor in the U.S., and the number of vehicles and drivers continues to grow to meet demand. This includes the recent purchase of parcel trucks for deliveries to small facilities and patient homes, much like Amazon or FedEx.

“Every time we deliver on MedTrans, our service and cost are a competitive advantage,” said Miller, who also praised the resiliency and dedication of MedTrans drivers, along with the entire operations team.

To stay on top of evolving supply chain issues, Medline hosts biannual Supply Chain Executive Roundtables with healthcare providers—both customers and noncustomers.

“The goal of these roundtables is to create an environment where there is peer-to-peer collaboration and sharing; where participants have a chance to talk through some of the biggest challenges they’re facing in their organizations,” said Melanie Millar, Medline director, marketing sales.

For Medline, the roundtables “give us a chance to be in the conversation. We’re not providing a sales pitch but instead an environment to help facilitate discussions on key issues.”

“We’re investing in technology, but also in our people,” said Miller. “We’re more than 11,000 team members strong in operations, and our success is based on the quality of our great team.”

“Medline understands that the most pressing challenge in healthcare today is the high cost of care,” said Jim Pigott, Medline executive vice president. “Fortunately for us, Medline developed a business model many years ago that is still well positioned to address this challenge. To that end, it’s important that we continue to provide solutions to all our customers as they face healthcare’s ever-growing financial pressure.”

Over the next five years and beyond, healthcare will continue to undergo tremendous change—change that will lead to newer technologies, innovative solutions and, ultimately, a more resilient and effective system of care. At Medline, we’re responsive and invested for the long term, and ready for what’s next.

Stay up to date with the latest news on how Medline is innovating. Visit medline. newsroom.com. ■