A home health supply coordinator shares a 6-step procurement checklist covering ConvaTec wound care, ConvaTec GentleCath Air catheters, ultrasound machine decisions, patient monitors, and the CPAP vs BiPAP difference—with real dollar amounts attached to every lesson.

I've handled medical supply orders for a home health agency for six years now. In that time, I've personally made (and documented) eight significant ordering mistakes—totaling roughly $12,000 in wasted budget. This checklist is the result. I maintain it for our team so nobody else repeats what I did.

Use this if:

• You're placing orders for a small clinic, home care team, or long-term care facility without a dedicated supply chain person.
• You're about to spend money on medical supplies or equipment and don't have a purchasing process yet.
• You inherited a supply closet full of expired products (or stuff that's about to expire).

Six steps, and they go in order. Steps 1–3 cover supply categories (mostly wound care and catheters). Steps 4–5 cover equipment purchases (ultrasound machines, patient monitors, CPAP vs BiPAP). Step 6 is the one everyone skips—including me, until it hurt.

I use ConvaTec products as examples throughout. That's because ConvaTec covers a broad range of categories we actually stock—wound care, ostomy, continence, infusion—and because our agency has landed on several of their products as our standard. But the structure applies no matter which vendor you're ordering from.

Step 1: Map your patient population before you talk to a single sales rep

Late 2018. A ConvaTec rep came in with what she called a "starter wound care bundle." I was six months into the role, and it sounded like a reasonable way to get our supply room stocked. I signed a purchase order for $1,600.

It took me two months to realize that only 21% of our active patients had chronic wounds. The rest were ostomy, continence, or infusion. That $1,600 order was partly useful, but a good $700 of it expired in the cupboard.

Now, the first step in any ordering cycle: pull the last 6 months of patient visit records. Categorize by condition—wound care, ostomy, continence, infusion, respiratory. Count actual patient encounters. That's a two-hour spreadsheet task, and it changes every purchasing decision that follows.

If you can't name your top 3 patient conditions without opening charts, you're not ready to order anything.

Step 2: Standardize your wound care formulary around what your nurses actually use

What most people don't realize is that product reps will happily sell you the full line. Not because you need it—because their job is to get products into your supply room. A "starter bundle" is almost never a clinically driven list. It's just what fits in a box.

By 2020, I had 11 types of dressing in stock. Four foam varieties. Eight hydrocolloid variants. Three barrier creams. Choice paralysis is real—nurses grabbed whatever they remembered from training, and the rest expired in silence.

The fix was boring but effective: one first-line and one second-line option for each dressing category. We standardized on ConvaTec wound care for skin barriers and foam dressings. Not because they're "the best" in any absolute sense—that phrase doesn't mean much in wound care—but because their products are consistent and their sizing works across the patient population we see.

Talk to your nurses before you commit. Not about what they learned in school—about what they've used in the past year. I once proposed a dressing that looked great in a clinical article. The nurses looked at me like I was speaking another language. The product went unused. I should have asked first.

Step 3: Pick catheters based on patient outcomes, not per-unit price

I still wince at this one.

In 2021, I decided to switch our intermittent catheter standard from hydrophilic to a cheaper non-coated option. Savings: $0.80 per unit. Three months later, our UTI-related home visits were way up. It took us an uncomfortable amount of time to connect the dots—patients' families were calling, and we were blaming everything except our own decision.

When we switched back to a hydrophilic catheter, the UTI numbers returned to baseline. Our standard now is the ConvaTec GentleCath Air. The savings math: $0.80 per unit versus roughly $180 per UTI home visit, not including antibiotics and patient suffering. Penny-wise, pound-foolish doesn't begin to capture it.

That said, I'm not going to tell you every patient needs a hydrophilic catheter. Some of our patients have used the same catheter type for years, no problems, no UTIs. Don't switch a stable patient just to standardize on one brand. Standardize your protocols, not your patients' bodies. For new patients or anyone with recurrent infections, though, specify hydrophilic—GentleCath Air has been the right call for us.

Step 4: Don't buy an ultrasound machine or a patient monitor until the volume is real

This one deserves more than one example, because equipment is where the dollars really sink.

Patient monitors. We did this one right—sort of. When we launched a telehealth program, I bought six basic patient monitors (SpO2, heart rate, blood pressure) at $420 each. They've earned their keep. The near-miss was the $2,800 upgrade model with advanced arrhythmia detection. I had the purchase order queued up, and a nurse practitioner pulled me aside: "We're not doing cardiac telemetry. We're doing wound checks and vital signs." I changed the order and saved around $14,000.

Ultrasound machine. This one stings. In Q2 2023, our clinical director wanted a portable ultrasound machine. It felt like a "modern agency should have one" purchase. We found a used device for $9,800—good price, gently used—and bought it.

Eight months later, it had been used 6 times. Cost per clinical use: $1,633.

Here's the thing: the decision wasn't wrong because ultrasound machines are bad. It was wrong because we didn't have a protocol or the patient volume to justify it. If you're doing guided injections or vascular access, an ultrasound machine is a workhorse and the cost per use is probably under $50. If you're doing wound assessment, wait and see if a portable unit becomes standard practice before you own one. Rent or borrow first.

My gut said "we'll find uses for it." The data said "not yet." The gut won, and it cost us.

Step 5: Understand the CPAP vs BiPAP difference before you order either

December 2022. I ordered 3 CPAPs and 2 BiPAPs in one procurement, thinking "we'll be covered either way." Except I didn't actually understand the clinical difference at the time. I let a distributor's rep talk me into a mixed quantity, and I guessed a 50/50 split with zero patient data behind it.

Turns out about 80% of our respiratory patients had obstructive sleep apnea (CPAP), and the rest had COPD or neuromuscular conditions needing BiPAP. My order made us short on the thing we needed most and long on the thing we didn't need at all. The two BiPAPs sat in inventory for 7 months until another agency took them, at a discount. Total loss: roughly $400, plus the abandoned shelf space and the headache of arranging the transfer.

The clinical difference, quickly:

• CPAP blows one continuous pressure, both inhale and exhale. It's the standard treatment for obstructive sleep apnea.
• BiPAP delivers two pressure levels—higher when inhaling, lower when exhaling. It's used for respiratory insufficiency, COPD with hypercapnia, neuromuscular disease, and some heart failure cases.

The question isn't "which is more popular" (it's CPAP, by far in our population). The question is: who are your patients? A primary care clinic that screens for sleep apnea will lean heavily CPAP. A home health agency with COPD and heart failure patients needs at least one BiPAP pathway.

Insurance is a factor too. CPAP coverage for OSA is well-established and relatively easy. BiPAP requires documented evidence that a single pressure level wasn't sufficient—overnight oximetry, blood gas, something on paper. Budget accordingly.

If you're ordering 5 respiratory devices without a patient name attached to each one, that's a red flag.

Step 6: Set reorder points before you need them

September 2022. We ran out of a ConvaTec skin barrier size midweek. A patient arrived for her dressing change and we didn't have the right one.

The cause: I'd assumed the distributor's automatic reporting would catch it. It didn't. And here's something distributors won't tell you: "standard turnaround" includes buffer time used to manage their inventory queues. It is not necessarily how long your order takes. When I asked for an expedite, the answer was, "we don't expedite until there's a patient waiting." There was. It cost us a week of scrambling and a clinic visit that should have been a home visit.

Try this instead:

• For every supply item you stock, define a minimum. When inventory drops below two weeks of average usage, reorder. If your vendor computes this for you, check that they're using your actual usage data, not their generic default.
• Track expiration dates. We currently check expiry every quarter. Products with a 5-year shelf life still expire if you bought 200 of something you use 8 per week.
• Set this up before the first box runs out. That sounds obvious. It's not—I skipped it for three years.

I'm not 100% sure these are the right numbers for every agency. They're the ones that came out of my errors. The point is: pick a number, write it down, and treat your inventory minimum like a clinical protocol.

Recurring mistakes I still see (and sometimes still make)

1. Ordering the full product line because the rep made it sound like the standard. That was write-off number one. Roughly $700 in expired dressings.
2. Switching patients' catheters to save cents per unit without tracking UTI outcomes. Back to GentleCath Air, and the lesson is now on our team checklist.
3. Buying an ultrasound machine before having a protocol and patient volume. $9,800 machine, $1,633 per use after 8 months.
4. Ordering CPAP machines and BiPAP machines as if they're interchangeable inventory units. They aren't. The patients decide, not the price sheet.
5. Skipping the reorder point because "it's basically the same as last time." It wasn't. That was $400 and a week of scrambling, plus a patient who deserved better.

When not to use this checklist

If you run a hospital outpatient department with a centralized supply chain team, this is too basic for you. If you're a single-specialty clinic with a homogeneous patient population—say, wound care only, or sleep diagnostics—Steps 1 and 4 don't apply; you already know your volume. And if you're a multi-site agency with 1,500+ active patients, you need a real inventory management system, not a checklist operated by one person.

Also, if you're ordering for a patient group you haven't fully profiled yet, start with Step 1, not the catalog.