Case Study: National Installation and Service Support for Fresenius Medical Care

Starting in 2020, Daniels Health was engaged by Fresenius Medical Care (FMC) to support specialized medical waste disposal at select sites. What began as a trial at 21 locations in Florida quickly scaled to 300 locations by May 2022. Now, several years later, Daniels is the primary provider for Fresenius across the nation, with our disposal solutions present at over 1,950 locations and counting.

This case study will explore the growth of the Fresenius and Daniels partnership, highlighting the seamless onboarding and implementation process as well as the ongoing service, support and optimization that has helped Fresenius reduce spend and carbon emissions associated with medical waste disposal.

TOPICS WE WILL COVER:

Initial Trial Period

Fresenius initially reached out to Daniels to help solve the following problems:

As a proof of concept, Daniels executed a pilot across 21 sites in Florida, which included a rollout of the safety-engineered Sharpsmart system and reusable RMW bins. This opportunity to showcase our safety and service excellence delivered positive results:

As the trial demonstrated, Daniels was able to increase the efficiency of Fresenius’ waste management program without missing any pick-ups. This success led to further expansion of the Fresenius and Daniels partnership, beginning with 300 locations.

Onboarding and Implementation

Daniels Health hit the ground running with an onboarding and implementation plan designed to satisfy Fresenius’ appetite for change, initially targeting 20 installed locations per month.

The first order of action was to create a detailed project plan, including an extensive Gantt chart that fully detailed the project plan timeline.

In order to ensure smooth transitions at Fresenius sites across the country, Daniels took on the heavy lifting, driving the installation process at a system-wide level while also engaging regional and local team members as necessary for information gathering and individual roll-outs.

As the installations came online, the Daniels team was able to immediately begin providing measurable data on the total percent of reduced stops, one of the key optimization measures agreed upon with Fresenius. To date, the rollout has seen a 31% and counting reduction in stops thanks to service frequency optimization, Daniels’ efficient container designs and right-sizing of containers at each location.

Reliable Service

Daniels has not just provided more efficient service, as measured by a reduction in the total number of stops required at each Fresenius location, but has also delivered consistently reliable service.

In order to track service reliability, Daniels relies on a logistics industry metric known as DIFOT – Delivery In Full, On Time. DIFOT is a classic service metric used across industries. At Daniels, a delivery is consider “in full” and “on time” if it meets the following parameters:

If any item of the above is missed, it is considered a “missed stop,” even if it is just one small container that didn’t make it in the delivery.

Despite such strict parameters, Daniels has been able to deliver a 98.74% DIFOT score across all Fresenius locations. That level of reliability is thanks to our careful operational planning process to ensure that drivers are properly stocked and routes are efficiently designed.

When the rare missed stop does occur, Daniels proactively communicates what happened to the relevant Fresenius contact and promptly reschedules as necessary.

Reporting & Data Commitments

At Daniels Health, when we say we let your data go to waste, we mean it in the most literal sense. Unlike other vendors that handle healthcare waste, Daniels Health is the only provider that scans and weighs each container to capture medical waste data by waste type, container type and location.

Our proprietary containment and disposal solutions enable the collection of vast amounts of data, including:

• The number of exchanges at a specific location
• The precise containers being exchanged
• The total weight of waste generated by clinic, region or system
• Specific container fill rates
• The amount being spent per each service

With this level of granular data, Daniels delivers specific insights and reports that help drive meaningful outcomes around program optimization, reductions in spending and reduced carbon emissions. These data insights are measured against both system-wide and industry benchmarks to identify inefficiencies and deliver best practices.

For example, a Daniels Health representative might notice that containers from a specific facility in Florida are being returned to the treatment facility only half full. To address this inefficiency, the system might consider reducing the size of their containers or lowering the exchange frequency on the existing containers. Either way, the result is a reduction in spending by the facility.

Dedicated Customer Support, Program Optimizations and Innovations

The last element of the Daniels Health partnership with Fresenius is ongoing support and optimization. When issues inevitable arise, Fresenius clinics are able to quickly reach Daniels Health representatives. Whether that’s a dedicated program manager at the system level or the local support team based in the nearest treatment facility, Daniels’ support personnel are available at a moment’s notice and work in concert to ensure service needs are met.

Outside of the occasional one-off issue resolution, our support team works with Fresenius clinics to drive down spending and carbon emissions, utilizing actual data to drive decision making. This includes partnering together to eliminate unnecessary services that are impacting the bottom line.

Lastly, our broader support teams are constantly working on innovations that further streamline Fresenius’ waste management, such as custom-designed container solutions for specific locations delivered by our multi-national engineering team.

An Ongoing Partnership

Taken as a whole, Daniels partnership with Fresenius has been an incredible success. Over the past half-decade, Daniels has helped Fresenius to address their core challenges with healthcare waste disposal: reliable service at a national scale; safe, user-friendly containment systems; and optimized service that reduces spending.

As Daniels continues to support nearly 2,000 Fresenius clinics, we look forward to providing additional value for the foreseeable future.