Stop Treating Supplies Like a Set-It-and-Forget-It: The Procurement Playbook for Growing Dental Groups | Ep. 167 | Brad Freeman

Industry average for supply spend is five to six percent of collections. Most growing groups are running eight, nine, ten. And once it compounds, it is very hard to reel back.

That's the problem Brad Freeman built Source Club to solve - and he is one of the few people in dental who actually came up in the supply chain before he started selling into it.

Brad Freeman is the founder and owner of Source Club, a hybrid GPO and outsourced procurement solution serving around 600 dental practices across the country - from single-location private practices to multi-site emerging groups. In this episode, he and Greg Essenmacher break down what procurement discipline actually looks like at the practice level, why formulary compliance is the wrong goal, what the real number is, and how Source Club helps smaller groups compete on pricing against the largest DSOs in the country.

They discuss:

- Why dental supply spend is quietly running 8-10% of collections at many growing groups - and why that number is so hard to fix once it gets out of hand

- The difference between a formulary and an ordering list - and why an 8,000-line-item formulary at a 40-location group is just a list with a different name

- Why the goal is never formulary compliance - it is budgetary compliance, and how that reframe changes how groups manage procurement entirely

- The pricing discrepancy between a 1-2 location practice and a 250-location DSO - and how Source Club gives smaller groups access to the same leverage

- How to standardize composite purchasing across a 3-location group and save $40-50k a year in the process - and why most practice owners don't have that conversation with their doctors

- The two-to-three-million-dollar threshold: when it makes sense to hire a dedicated procurement manager, and why Source Club's clients are choosing to keep them on even after crossing it

- Why Source Club charges a membership fee and takes zero commission on products - and what that means for the advice they can give

- How the ordering frequency alone - going from twice a week to twice a month - can clean up a practice's cash flow and inventory management