Purchasing Agent

Responsible for collaborating with various levels of hospital personnel to explore alternatives and negotiate with vendors for the acquisition of various commodities such as inventory, non-hospital supplies, capital equipment, furnishings, etc. to ensure standardization and value.

Responsibilities

• Coordinate, negotiate, and order supplies and capital equipment.
• Act as liaison between vendors and hospital.
• Consult with manufacturers, vendors, and sales representatives in the procurement of supplies.
• Assist with the issuance, analysis, and other functions necessary to obtain bids and/or pricing from vendors and potential vendors for supply items.
• Interact with vendors to resolve issues such as back orders, substitutions, delivery errors, and stat requests.
• Make independent data-driven decisions to resolve operational and purchasing situations.
• Establish and maintain hospital supply database to ensure accurate transmittal of EDI orders.
• Place orders with external vendors by determining vendor, establishing pricing, and utilizing materials management systems.
• Resolve purchase order and invoice discrepancies with Accounts Payable, internal customers, and vendors.
• Provide data analysis on Purchase Orders with assistance.
• Use PC-based communication, label generation, database, EDI, and spreadsheet programs to ensure proper documentation, ordering, and receiving of supplies.
• Respond to inquiries from internal customers regarding materials acquisition.
• Coordinate recall notifications and product defect reports.
• Provide information to Value Analysis Committee regarding alternative supply options and perform value analysis price comparisons.
• Complete tasks to include generator, collector, analyzer, user, and/or enterer of data and/or information.
• Back-up responsibility for replenishment process for PAR (Periodic Automatic Replenishment System) and non-PAR areas and items, development, creation, and maintenance of hospital-wide departmental inventories, periodic counting, EDI order transmission, material receipt and replenishment systems, carrying out receipt and distribution activities, and courier services and coordination of internal and external mail services.
• Perform other duties as requested.

Requirements

• Minimum: High School diploma required.
• Preferred: College Degree preferred.
• Minimum: Three (3) years purchasing experience.
• Preferred: Five (5) years purchasing experience in a hospital setting.