Chairman FirstChoice Cooperative

A Message from the Vice President of Sales for FirstChoice Cooperative

As you can tell by reading his Message, our Chairman, Freddie Sanchez, is VERY passionate about quality patient care for all our members’ patients, and he realizes that with pending healthcare reform, the need to reduce healthcare expense is critical for survival as a healthcare provider. FirstChoice Cooperative can greatly assist you in your cost reduction efforts. But you need to maximize your supply cost savings through FCC.

Back when I worked as the Administrative Director of Materials Management for a large Texas healthcare system, our CEO told me, "Jeff, either our supply costs get reduced even further, or we’ll have to begin letting people go." Talk about pressure! The point in that little story is simply to emphasize the need to look at your supply costs, and let us help you reduce them even further. Have you looked at everything we have to offer? For example:

• Are you considering the purchase of any capital equipment this year? If you are, if you give a list of the anticipated capital purchases to your FirstChoice Region Director, we’ll return that list with notations of which items listed we have contracts for, which vendors we have under contract, and the associated contract numbers. Then when you are ready to purchase, we can help you bid, or even review your bid responses and offer recommendations. Just remember to ask for FirstChoice pricing– and reference "FirstChoice Cooperative" somewhere on the purchase order. There’s a lot of money in the Patronage Dividends on capital equipment. You don’t want to miss out on that!!
• Are you on or have you looked hard at our distribution contracts? Again, there are significant Patronage dollars that pass through these distribution contracts – and again lower your costs as well. FirstChoice Cooperative has distribution contracts for numerous areas: med/surg, dietary, lab, pharmacy, radiology. We even have a HUB distributor for capital equipment if you’re looking/needing to access a HUB vendor.

Change isn’t always easy. But the days of "easy" are over. Moving from a non-contracted distributor to one under an FCC contract can reduce your costs significantly without needing to change products or pharmaceuticals. That’s fairly easy.

Sincerely,

Jeff Nellis

Vice President of Sales

FirstChoice Cooperative is the most innovative and cost effective Group Purchasing Cooperative in the United States.

FirstChoice Cooperative provides a process second to none for healthcare providers, educational institutions, municipalities and other community businesses.

FirstChoice Cooperative is a member owned cooperative whose primary goal is to provide a process for all providers, small or large, to reduce supply cost in our communities where we live and work while maintaining the highest level of quality. We feel that healthcare costs go beyond the walls of the healthcare facility, so we have incorporated into our mission a process to help reduce the overall cost of each community by asking them to join us in our efforts to reduce similar cost between the industries.

FirstChoice Cooperative has a network of almost 12,000 members nationwide through its affiliations and management agreements with other National Cooperative which include healthcare providers, city and county municipalities, educational institutions, and community businesses that add additional purchasing volume and strength to FirstChoice Cooperative.

FirstChoice Cooperative feels that our process is the most innovative and cost effective model in the industry and we invite you to discover the FirstChoice Cooperative difference.