I read the post on sure-seals and thought I would throw this out for all of you. I was a Gambro clinic that was bought by Duh-Vita (as if that is not already known). Anyway, as soon as Duh-Vita bought us it was cut this and cut that. Duh-Vita wanted us to change the way we took care of the patients and one of the things was to discontinue the use of sure-seals... Ok so my point.
As most are aware, I was the CD (now FA). I went to the medical director and told him of the BS that Duh-Vita was putting out. I asked him to help us get the sure-seals back in use. Wow... did he ever do it. He had me write a verbal order in each chart for each patient that was not on a cath that they were to use sure-seals. This was a PHYSICIANS order and Duh-Vita had no choice but to allow me to do it. Yea, they raised hell and they said oh you bad manager, now look at your supply costs, etc, etc. But the end result was that we did get them back and we did use them. I am not sure if the new FA has stopped but I know that when I was there, the medical director was insistant on the use.
This can be applied to other things as well. If your clinic is NOT physician owned and the physician has no monitary stake in the supplies and he is willing to do the right thing, he can change a lot of BS policies by just writing doctors orders for this or that. Duh-Vita (and others I am sure) are not willing to pi$$ off a physician and medical director over a couple thousand dollars a year.
Just a thought.. good luck.