Bill Klaproth (host): This is an AAOMS On the Go podcast. I'm Bill Klaproth. With me is Dr. Paul Bhatti, founder of Sowingo, an AAOMS Advantage Approved Partner. He joins us to talk about the complexities of inventory management, helping practices to minimize costs, reduce waste, and ensure compliance.

Dr. Bhatti, welcome.

Paul Bhatti, DDS, MD: Thank you very much for having me, Bill.

Host: It's great to have you here, and thank you so much for your time. So let's jump right into this, Dr. Bhatti. Why is effective inventory management so crucial for OMS practices?

Paul Bhatti, DDS, MD: That's a great question, Bill. I think that inventory is critical in our practices because inventory is so costly to us. Dental supplies, surgical supplies are extremely expensive and represent a large portion of our overhead. And that, along with the fact that we always want to have the supplies that we need to do the surgeries that we want, we never want to be running out of something in the middle of a surgery or while we're doing a surgery. And I think for all of those reasons, managing your inventory is very critical.

Host: Really important to have the necessary supplies ready and available, right? Maintaining an efficient workflow and by optimizing your inventory management, really, it kind of helps control costs too, right? By optimizing, ordering and reducing waste, would that be true?

Paul Bhatti, DDS, MD: Absolutely. I think it's incredible how much wastage we see out there, and typically for assistants, without some type of system in place, it becomes very daunting to manage. There are hundreds of different types of products from many different companies that we're managing out there  – especially the dental assistants, the nurses, et cetera.

And, without having an inventory management system, there can be instances –  and I certainly have experienced it as an oral surgeon – where we didn't have the supplies that we needed to do what we wanted. And as a result, that's kind of what led me to develop the software company Sowingo, which manage helps oral surgery practices manage their inventory.

But it's very, very important to have some handle of this and it makes it easier for our staff. It cuts down the cost and ensures that you have what you need to practice.

Host: Yeah, so you mentioned the, you said the word daunting, so let's probe that a little bit more. What challenges do practices face then when managing inventory?

Paul Bhatti, DDS, MD: I think the biggest part is that there's a lot of parts and pieces. And so when you go to see how much you have of a particular product, it can be very difficult as, because it's changing all the time. You might have a good handle of it in the beginning of the day, but as you start to use implant products – especially, which are some of the most expensive items that we use –  that quantity will shift.

And you might use certain amounts of stock, of inventory, of a particular size. You might be running low on that, and you might have lots of other stuff. Depends on how the day goes. And so it's a evolving, changing situation and that's what makes it difficult to manage, and that's why having some type of system in place is very, very important.

And again, as we mentioned previously, without that, you're going to increase your operating costs. You're going to make it more difficult for the staff and potentially cause some issues with not having the right supplies when you need them.

Host: Yeah. That overstocking or under stocking, if you will, certainly is something to try to manage. Expiration dates too, I would think are something you really need to keep track of. So, like you said, to me, it sounds simple. We're going to track inventory, but I know there are a lot of challenges that you just mentioned and it's not as easy as it sounds.

So how can technology improve inventory management?

Paul Bhatti, DDS, MD: I think technology with the state that it's in today makes it very manageable to put an inventory management system in the office. In the old days, we used to have Excel. In the old days, we used to use paper. That's how old I am. But then Excel came along and now there's a variety of different software options available.

The bar coding of products has made it much easier to scan things in and out, which wasn't available before. And so there's lots of evolution of technology that allows now making inventory management possible.

One of the challenging things with inventory in an oral surgery practice is also the turnover of staff. Sometimes you might have your key ordering person go away, move. You might have to make a change, a number of different reasons why that might happen. And training a new person is very, very difficult. So with a technology or a solution in place, it gets so easy to train the next person.

And so with lots of options out there, I think it makes sense for every oral surgery practice to try to implement some type of inventory management system within their practice.

Host: And in the healthcare industry, we're hearing a lot about automation as well for many different departments. Can you talk about the role of automation in helping to streamline inventory management?

Paul Bhatti, DDS, MD: Yeah, once you put in a digital solution, I think one of the key values of that is you get to start to look at your usage rates. And as you start looking at usage rates, you can start doing forecasting, predictability, and with AI and other tools, you can start getting into automatic reordering, which then takes a lot of the burden away from the staff because you know what you're using and how much you need. And that certainly prevents overstocking and wastage. So I think automation eventually will play a larger and larger role when it comes to inventory management within our practices.

Host: So then what types of dental supplies, surgical supplies should an OMS be tracking?

Paul Bhatti, DDS, MD: I think if I had to break it down into what's most critical, I think dental implant products would be number one on my list because they're so expensive. And with many different companies and types of products that we're using – whether it's dental implants, bone grafts, membranes, cover screws, healing abutments – those are a lot of different products and that becomes very difficult to manage. But with the barcoding system that's available, it is very, very manageable with a digital inventory solution.

And I also think medications is extremely important to manage. Especially whether you're talking about just regular medications that we might be using for sedations or if you're managing emergency medications, making sure your drugs are always – emergency drugs are always up to date – never expiring.

And similarly for implant products, so if I had to pick the top two, I think those are the things that I would try to manage most compared to, let's say gauze and gloves and bibs and those kinds of things, which I think are far less important.

Host: Yeah, you got into this profession to be a surgeon and help people with their oral health. You never thought you'd be, you'd have to learn inventory control, right? And supply chain and all that stuff.

Paul Bhatti, DDS, MD: Exactly. No, it is interesting. You know, once we leave residency, you think it's going to be all about surgery, which again, it is and certainly that's our area of expertise. But when you're running a practice, things like inventory control, accounting, marketing, all of these are things which we don't really think too much about when we're training, but certainly become important once we leave training.

Host: Yeah. And that's why we have people like Sowingo to help us with things like this. So I know you kind of joked, “I remember tracking inventory on paper,” and then of course Excel that a lot of people have used. So what's your recommendation? I think I know what it is, but I'm just kind of curious. Your thoughts on digital or manual tracking systems?

Paul Bhatti, DDS, MD: I certainly prefer digital. I think given the technology, as I mentioned previously, that's available out there, compared to many years earlier, especially when I started practicing, I think, even the way the packaging of the products is, again, with barcodes and all kinds of other tools within the packaging – picture taking ability – digital solutions are far superior over to the manual system.

And I think given the quantity of supplies, how do you even manually try to track all of this? And I think it becomes very difficult. So, from my perspective, one of the things that I've always tried to do and encourage people to do is to have a digital solution, which is then easy to go back and reference. It's easy to train the next person. It's cloud-based. You can kind of look at it at home. You don't have to be stuck into the office.

So there's a number of different advantages over digital versus a manual system.

Host: So that leads me to my next question. Tell us how you work with OMSs. How do you integrate your system with their practice?

Paul Bhatti, DDS, MD: What we do is we just want to compliment what practices are doing. So implant products, for example, are taken out every day. When they're taken out, it's very easy to scan those products on a app that we have and instantly the quantity gets reduced of what you have. And now tracking that on a daily basis as you're using supplies  – or supplies are put in as you get new shipments – takes only seconds to do.

And I think the advantage to oral surgery practices that are implementing Sowingo  or a system like Sowingo, I think they certainly have a lot more visibility. And again, they're reducing their overall cost. They're reducing wastage. There's more comfort knowing that you know exactly what you have on hand. No more last minute orders. And again, full visibility on a huge expense within our practice.

Host: Yeah, to me this not only helps with accuracy of the inventory, cost control of the inventory, but man, it seems like a big time-saver too. Would that be right?

Paul Bhatti, DDS, MD: Absolutely. I mean, it's incredible when people try to go in and spend hours and hours manually counting supplies, making human errors. And again, it's changing constantly, so the savings is enormous. And anytime they're running low, the software, for example, tells you what's expiring, what's running low – gets very easy to reorder. So you're saving time not manually counting things. And secondly, even the ordering process becomes a lot more simplified. So huge time savings on both fronts.

Host: Well, that's where that automation comes in as well. Generating alerts for low stock. How helpful is that? I mean, that's amazing. Well, Dr. Bhatti, this has really been informative. Thank you so much for joining me. Before we wrap up, is there anything you want to add?

Paul Bhatti, DDS, MD: In summary, I think given today's environment with technology, I think I would encourage everybody to look at implementing some type of inventory control system in their office. I think it would certainly help them reduce their costs. Again, make sure that they have the products that they need to practice and minimize the wastage that can occur otherwise.

So I think there's great solutions out there and I think oral surgery practices that want to become modernized and have all the benefits that technology has to offer, they could certainly take advantage of it and implement a system.

Host: Yeah, well said. Dr. Bhatti, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.

Paul Bhatti, DDS, MD: Thank you very much for having me.

Host: You bet. Once again, that is Dr. Paul Bhatti and for more information, how cool is this? You can visit the Sowingo webpage at AAOMSadvantage.org. A whole bunch of information for you right there at AAOMSadvantage.org.

And if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it on your social media and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss an episode. I'm Bill Klaproth. This is AAOMS On the Go. Thanks for listening.