When you are in charge of buying equipment for your medical practice or for a hospital or large medical center, then you will often be in a dilemma – where to go to buy the new piece of equipment to replace the worn-out one, or to provide the equipment for the new hospital wing. If you have been buying hospital equipment for a while you may have established channels for purchasing medical equipment, and a Rolodex of people to call. However, these days, companies move and disappear, people change jobs, and often times, you find yourself in a position where you must find a new source of your medical equipment.

Having entered the 21st century a while back, buying medical equipment online has become a viable and an oft used option for many. Let’s look at some of the advantages of buying medical equipment online as compared to purchasing locally. Advantages of getting hospital equipment online – One of the first advantages of acquiring medical equipment online has got to be a large selection of options. Large online stores such as Amazon have secured acres and acres of storage space where it is cheap, and have developed computer-driven distribution channels and partners to get the equipment out quickly and efficiently.

Linked to effective use of cheap storage space is the second advantage: the price of medical equipment. While a local distributor can command a much higher price on the item they have in stock, online prices are lower because of increased competition online, and because of lower storage costs. You would be surprised at how low the cost online can go for an item such as a medicine cart, or an emergency crash cart, for instance.

The third advantage is shipping. While some medical equipment may be heavy and may seem difficult to ship, over time the large online companies have figured ways to ship securely and with care. The shipping can be overnight in most cases to anywhere in the USA, and in worst cases will not take more than a few days. And, the experience shows that, large online companies usually stick with their shipping time estimates. It just makes sense, they do not have a monopoly over the service, and therefore it is in their interest to accurately and safely estimate shipping time. That is why, in most cases, you can expect your delivery sooner than promised.

Disadvantages of getting medical equipment online – Sure, there are disadvantages of buying online as well. Sometimes, you would just feel much better if you can actually see the item, touch it, before you buy. Which makes a lot of sense. However, when you are a more experienced buyer, you will figure out the good from the bad, you will be able to discern the good product from the questionable product online just by considering the brand name (a lot of large manufacturers sell directly or through large online outlets), the written customer reviews, and the shipping and return warranties from the seller.

Taken all of these into account, the disadvantage of not being able to visually inspect the item before buying are not as prohibitive as they may seem initially, even for larger items such as medical crash carts.

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