How It Works

Physician Buying Groups Made Simple

A Physician Buying Group (PBG) is a vehicle for medical practices to purchase items from vendors/manufacturers at the best price possible. The result is higher profits for both individual medical practices and suppliers alike, and cheaper medical care for patients.

Here’s how it works: 

1. Medical practices join a PBG (for free!)
2. PBGs negotiate prices with vendors/manufacturers/distributors
3. Medical practices place orders for the new, discounted prices (thus, saving money)
4. In turn, suppliers gain more customers through their PBG
5. Medical care can be made more affordable for patients

Everybody wins! Let’s examine this process from a few different perspectives.

The Benefit For Medical Practices 

PBGs are like workers’ unions, but for medical practices. Individual medical practices are rarely able to have much influence over their massive suppliers, but by banding together, they have strength in numbers. PBGs represent the aggregate interests of their group of member practices.

Medical practices have a lot to gain from joining a PBG. The benefits are as follows: 

1. Medical practices receive discounted prices from their suppliers
2. PBGs act as advocates to negotiate with suppliers on the behalf of their members
3. Medical practices become part of a larger medical community 

And medical practices get all of these benefits for the reasonable price of $0.00. That’s right—it’s free. 

The Benefit For Suppliers

Every PBG has a certain set of suppliers that they do business with. For medical practices, membership to a PBG comes with loyalty to that PBG’s suppliers. For example, we at National Purchasing Group partner with Sanofi, Merck, and Pfizer. When medical practices become members with us, they will agree to be loyal to this group of suppliers. And because these three suppliers are industry leaders, it’s unlikely that any medical practice would ever have a need arise that we cannot satisfy.

Suppliers benefit from working with PBGs because PBGs are able to provide them with guaranteed business. So even though involvement with PBGs drives a lower profit per unit for suppliers, the sheer volume of shipping orders placed by PBGs more than bridges the gap. 

The Benefit For Patients

The cost of adequate medical care is already high, and it’s getting higher. Indeed, the affordability of medical treatment is frequently the subject of heated debate in the political sphere, but in the end, it’s just business. Of course the patient is the highest priority for every medical practice, but in order to be of any help at all, these practices need to stay “in the black.” The truth is that the cost of medical care is a direct reflection of how much it costs to provide that care.

When medical practices partner with a PBG, their costs are substantially reduced, and these are savings that can be passed on to patients. In this way, membership with a PBG enables medical professionals to provide their patients with the affordable care that they deserve.