Many years ago, says De Gheest, if you wanted to buy 100 shares of stock in, say, Wells Fargo, you d have to go all over the place trying to find some shareholder willing to sell you his or her shares. Dealing with a single seller in one transaction made it difficult for the buyer to know if he or she was getting the best price on shares that morning. Similarly, says De Gheest, hospital purchasing can be a blind process. There are a lot of buyers talking to a lot of sellers, with dozens of intermediaries also involved. At the end of the day, we close the trade and identify the winning hospitals and winning vendors, says De Gheest.
Hospitals actually have flexibility in choosing vendors they ll buy from and prices they ll pay.
However, once the hospital enters the bid process, it must be committed to it. This is not a hunting license for hospitals, says De Gheest. What we re saying to them is if you put in a bid, you can t change your mind afterwards. Today, the company has filed several patents on its business model. Sporting a 20-year track record of developing and growing health care businesses, De Gheest previously started and ran MedStars, an investment and executive management firm.