A look at the medical equipment delivery service market
In the medical supplies sector, efficient shipping with the right medical courier plays a pivotal role in ensuring the timely and safe delivery of crucial supplies. Whether it’s medical equipment or supplies, prompt and precise delivery is essential. As the demand for patient-centred care services like in-home care grows and the healthcare market becomes increasingly competitive, businesses face significant challenges in managing logistics while complying with complex regulations.
- Canada’s medical delivery market is expected to reach $27.431B USD by 2027. (Source: Knowledge Sourcing Intelligence)
- Over 40% of Canadians will be using online healthcare by 2027. (Source: BBD)
How to deliver medical supplies effectively?
In order for your business to stand out, you’ll need to learn how to overcome the key challenges affecting healthcare fulfillment services at the moment. These challenges include:
- Inefficient shipping: The need for fast but flexible shipping solutions for time-sensitive items can become costly without proper planning or contracts in place.
- Special shipping requirements: Medical equipment can be cumbersome and fragile, requiring special handling for packing and transit.
- Regulatory compliance and required documentation: Staying up to date with changing industry regulations can be time-consuming.
- Visibility and verification: Having a clear view of the delivery process from end to end is vital for verifying whether critical shipments have been delivered correctly.
Key Takeaways:
- Challenges when shipping medical devices and supplies
- Partnering with Purolator to employ efficient medical courier services
- How Purolator tackles your medical supply delivery service challenges
- Commitment to best-in-class logistics for medical businesses
- How Purolator supports your patient-centered approach
- Preparing medical equipment for shipping
- How Purolator provides effective shipping for healthcare businesses
- Partner with Purolator for medical courier success
Challenges when shipping medical devices and supplies
Getting safe transit options
Expensive medical devices may be at a higher risk for theft during transit. Purolator proudly holds a Level 1 Trucking Security Requirements (TSR) certification from the Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA). Additionally, we use a closed-loop network, which means fewer shipping hand-offs and opportunities for theft.
Fulfilling urgent medical deliveries
Clinics and hospitals must address emergency health needs immediately, which is why medical devices need to be delivered on time. Purolator offers Mission Critical for your most urgent shipments.
Handling unique shipping requirements
Many healthcare businesses ship products that qualify as dangerous, fragile or oversized goods. Purolator offers special handling that covers all of these classifications and more.
Navigating regulatory compliance
Understanding all the necessary regulations for shipping medical supplies can be overwhelming. Purolator’s extensive healthcare shipping experience can help you navigate the complex regulatory landscape.
Gaining complete shipping visibility
Medical businesses require full visibility throughout the entire shipping journey, including real-time access to shipment information and delivery tracking. Purolator has a variety of shipment tracking options, along with Photo Proof of Delivery, so you get complete visibility from end to end.
Meeting long-term KPIs
Medical device companies typically make long-term commitments and contracts with hospitals and are held to KPIs to ensure on-time delivery. You can trust Purolator Ground® and Express with high on-time performance that outperforms the competition in delivery time accuracy.
Finding a single-source logistics provider
Healthcare businesses need comprehensive, single-source logistics capabilities to accommodate their manufacturers’ diverse needs. Purolator’s more than 60 years of experience in medical shipping shows our commitment to providing comprehensive logistics solutions for the healthcare industry.
Delivering patient-centered care
The demand for patient-centred care is growing, especially for in-home care options as the Canadian population continues to age. Purolator positions your company to meet this demand with validated temperature control medical deliveries and 100% coverage for all Canadian postal codes.
Partnering with Purolator to employ efficient medical courier services
How Purolator tackles your medical supply delivery service challenges
Whether you need to re-evaluate shipping costs, get your most urgent shipments delivered on time or meet regulatory compliance documentation and confidentiality, Purolator has the solutions to overcome these common medical courier service challenges.
How to combat high shipping costs
As a medical devices supplier, minimizing the costs of your medical equipment delivery services is a top priority, especially when costs easily go up. The price of medical device logistics depends on a number of factors, including the urgency of the medical shipments, the size of the medical equipment and any special handling services required like validated temperature control. When adding on tracking, insurance options and urgent shipping options like overnight shipping, these costs are likely to rise even further.
To start reducing costs, partnering with a knowledgeable shipping company like Purolator can open up a range of solutions that are key to keeping costs manageable while still meeting your clients’ needs. Here’s what makes Purolator the superior choice:
- Chain of Signature service: Take advantage of Purolator’s Chain of Signature service, which provides monitored transportation for packages while requiring multiple signatures in transit. This service increases your visibility into the medical supplies transportation journey while also reducing the chances of loss or delays.
- Closed-loop network: With fewer hand-offs in a shipping journey, your medical device logistics network stands to benefit from reduced risk of costly damages and theft. Gain total package visibility across the shipping journey with Purolator’s closed-loop network of over 150 facilities. Enjoy seamless shipping with one partner for all Canadian deliveries.
- Minimize damages: Purolator is one of the most trusted brands in the delivery service category according to the Gustavson 2023 Brand Trust Index. Ship your medical supplies with us and gain the confidence that your products will arrive intact—ready for immediate use.
How to manage urgent medical shipments
When you’re shipping medical supplies, there may be emergency situations that require flexible expedited shipping services to deliver your most urgent shipments, such as surgical instruments, medical devices and supplies. Mission Critical is a specialized service offered by Purolator for your high-priority shipments that includes:
- Best-in-class tracking visibility: During an emergency medical shipment, providing visibility throughout the shipping journey not only gives your customers peace of mind, but also ensures that you know exactly when your medical supplies reach their destination. That’s why Mission Critical offers advanced tracking capabilities that allow you to monitor your shipment at every stage of its journey. This feature provides real-time updates and detailed tracking information, ensuring you’re always aware of the shipment’s status and location.
- Unmatched speed and total elapsed time reporting: Medical emergencies or urgent hospital supply shortages demand the fastest shipping available. Mission Critical is Purolator’s fastest service, with transit times that are measured in minutes, not days. At the end of your shipment’s journey, Mission Critical even gives you detailed information on the total time taken for your shipment from pick-up to delivery. This helps you evaluate performance, understand delivery efficiency and improve planning and coordination for future shipments.
- Global reach: Having access to a logistics network with extensive reach enables you to transport urgent shipments to remote locations even as your business expands internationally. Mission Critical supports international shipments, with expertise in handling both import and export needs across various global regions. Purolator even offers an integrated remote delivery option that combines the strength of our expansive courier network with Mission Critical’s unmatched speed in the final mile of delivery—improving reach, speed and efficiency in even the most rural areas.
- 24-hour access to Purolator’s shipping specialists: Emergency shipments need constant monitoring to ensure that any disruptions are dealt with quickly. With Mission Critical, you gain round-the-clock access to Purolator’s dedicated shipping experts, including weekends and holidays, ensuring that support is always available. A 24/7/365 control tower manages and updates all critical jobs, providing real-time tracking and status updates. Immediate and continuous support allows you to resolve issues quickly, helping your urgent deliveries arrive on time.
- Automated flight tracking: Get automated updates on flight schedules, delays or changes that may impact your delivery. Flight tracking ensures that you have an accurate view of the delivery timeline even if your shipment is currently being transported via air.
- Instructions for special shipments or deliveries: Medical supply deliveries often require special instructions to meet your clients’ expectations and ensure a smoother, more secure shipment. With Mission Critical, our team can easily accommodate unique handling requirements or delivery conditions. Our service even provides customized solutions based on your shipping needs. Mission Critical is flexible, offering both expedited shipping for urgent deliveries and solutions for more complex logistical challenges.
Why use Mission Critical?
Purolator Mission Critical is the go-to solution for your most urgent deliveries. With Mission Critical, you can ensure that time-sensitive medical supplies reach their destination without delay. It also reaches 100% of all Canadian postal codes, allowing your business to provide essential support for clinics, hospitals and individual patients in rural or remote locations. By leveraging Purolator Mission Critical, your medical supplies shipping company can ensure that its critical deliveries are handled with the highest level of speed, reliability and care—supporting better patient outcomes and operational efficiency.
When to use Special Handling Services
A wide variety of medical supplies will require special handling, such as large and delicate medical equipment . To reduce delays that may be caused by goods that are classified as dangerous, fragile or oversized, the easiest solution is to work with a shipping provider who offers special handling services.
At Purolator, we offer both special handling and dangerous goods services to our medical device logistics partners. Medical equipment can be fragile and require careful handling. Special handling services ensure that these items are treated with extra care to minimise delays during transit, while also using Medical Indicators (MI) and health indicator tags on packages to help move packages along quickly. Our trained personnel are equipped to manage your shipments safely, reducing the risks involved with medical supplies courier shipping.
Regulatory compliance and required documentation
The regulatory landscape for medical supplies shipments is complex and always evolving. Any errors can be costly for your business as healthcare shipments may get held up due to mistakes in documentation.
Instead of spending valuable time on regulatory compliance for each shipment, you can partner with a shipping provider like Purolator. Our team is well-versed in the complex regulations that govern medical shipping, including those related to medical devices and hazardous materials, and is trusted by many top pharmaceutical and medical providers across Canada. We provide guidance on the specific regulatory requirements for different types of medical shipments. And for international shipments, Purolator also assists and provides guidance when preparing and managing customs documentation. This includes invoices, packing lists, certificates of origin and other necessary paperwork to facilitate smooth customs clearance.
Patient confidentiality
When shipping medical supplies within Canada, your business needs to be aware of stringent patient confidentiality standards. Failure to meet these standards can result in shipments being delayed. These standards include:
- Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA): This act governs the use, collection and disclosure of personal information in Canada. The way your company handles patient information must be PIPEDA compliant. You must limit your use and disclosure of patient data and employ robust security measures to keep that data safe.
- Provincial privacy laws: Provinces also have their own privacy laws with specific rules around health information. For example, Ontario has the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA), and British Columbia has the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA). Your company must obtain explicit patient consent to use, collect and disclose health data.
- Healthcare regulation compliance: Companies shipping medical supplies must adhere to data storage, sharing and handling regulations set by Health Canada.
Purolator can help your company maintain the highest standards of patient confidentiality and privacy while ensuring that shipments are handled securely and in compliance with regulations. Our shipping services comply with Canadian privacy laws, such as the PIPEDA, safeguarding patient information while ensuring that sensitive health data is protected during transit.
Commitment to best-in-class logistics for medical businesses
At Purolator, we’re dedicated to employing best practices for all medical supply logistics services, including:
- Validated temperature control: Purolator’s validated ambient service provides storage in a consistent or temperature-controlled environment to help maintain the effectiveness and safety of your medical supplies.
- Route optimization: Direct and streamlined routes can reduce the overall time your medical supplies spend in transit. Our optimized routes help enhance your shipping efficiency while also having no hand-offs for increased reliability.
- Regulatory compliance: Ensuring that medical supplies are handled according to regulations is critical for maintaining patient safety and preserving the effectiveness of medical products. It’s why Purolator adheres to careful and compliant packaging of surgical instruments, diagnostic devices and mobility supplies.
- Visibility: Enhanced visibility offers transparency throughout the shipping process, allowing you to monitor progress and address concerns proactively. With Purolator, you have access to increased tracking visibility throughout the entire journey of your shipment, providing you with peace of mind and the ability to respond quickly to any issues that arise.
- Closed-loop network: A closed-loop shipping network helps ensure the security of your medical supplies. Trust Purolator’s closed-loop network, with no hand-offs to third parties, to reduce the risk of theft, loss and damage for your healthcare shipments.
- Time-definite delivery: Nearly all pharmacies and hospitals in Canada can be reached by Purolator’s next-day service, allowing you to make guaranteed time-definite shipments to key business customers.
- Broad geographic reach: Purolator delivers to 100% of postal codes in Canada, providing extensive coverage for your healthcare deliveries. Additionally, we’re also capable of sending your medical supplies cross-border to the U.S. or the rest of the world.
- Visual indicators for healthcare logistics packages: Whether you’re shipping on pallets with Purolator freight or sending out parcels with our courier services, your medical equipment and supplies will be given priority via healthcare visual indicators. The red tape on your packages helps us prioritize your medical supplies for timely delivery by ensuring the integrity of your goods, keeping your shipment grouped together and strategizing trailer loading.
How Purolator supports your patient-centered approach
Recently, healthcare providers have been emphasizing the importance of patient-centred care. In fact, 59% of patients want digital healthcare experience to mirror what they experience in online retail. That means prioritizing ease-of-use, patient convenience and personalization. This is what the heart of patient-centred care is about—putting the patients first and personalizing treatments to meet their individual needs. One aspect of this approach has been the rise of in-home care. As home-based treatment plans increase, patients now require hospitals and clinics to provide medical courier services. Purolator supports this patient-centred approach by offering:
- 100% coverage for all Canadian postal codes within our extensive network.
- Province-by-province compliance that is up to date and meets regulatory requirements throughout the country.
- Validated temperature-controlled shipping to maintain the integrity and safety of medical supplies.
- Stringent packaging standards that comply with the needs of shipping medical supplies that are classed as sensitive or dangerous.
- Nondescript packaging to discourage theft of important medical shipments.
- A range of flexible delivery options tailored to meet your medical shipping needs while also catering to your clients.
Look out for your customers with Purolator, your trusted delivery partner. Start delivering safely
Purolator provides the support you need to enhance your in-home care initiatives. For medical deliveries, we offer comprehensive solutions with end-to-end tracking and include an Adult Signature Required option for a more secure delivery.
Enhance the patient experience with seamless healthcare returns
Discarded healthcare products not only add to landfill waste, but can also pose a health hazard to in-home patients and the people they live with. However, with Purolator Express Healthcare Returns you can enhance efficiency and reduce waste by ensuring your reusable components are safely returned. The service helps you reduce costs, waste and wait times by facilitating the return and reuse of healthcare products. By improving your product return rate, you reduce manufacturing costs and enhance the overall patient experience.
The returns process involves four key steps:
- Purolator picks up empty containers with return labels.
- Containers are delivered to the Purolator return centre.
- Containers are palletized, shrink-wrapped and consolidated.
- Consolidated items are sent back to your business via Purolator Freight.
Deliver to in-home care patients with peace of mind
You can now verify your medical shipment deliveries with our Photo Proof of Delivery solution. Minimize patient disputes, reduce unsuccessful delivery claims and improve patient trust and confidence with a solution that shows photo proof of the exact location where a medical delivery has been made.
Leveraging our expansive network coverage, we reach 100% of Canadian postal codes, ensuring that no matter where patients are, their medical devices will be able to reach them.
Put patients first with seamless medical device delivery. Learn more
Preparing medical equipment for shipping
Medical equipment shipping often includes sensitive items that need to be protected throughout the journey. For more than 60 years, Purolator has been trusted to deliver the most time-sensitive and fragile shipments to, from and within Canada by some of the country’s largest healthcare suppliers. Here are a few tips from our packing experts to help you package irregularly shaped and fragile items for safer medical equipment transportation:
Packing irregularly shaped items
Items that are oversized, bulky or otherwise irregularly shaped require extra care and protection. For example, irregularly shaped items may include MRI machines, hospital beds or treatment tables. Due to their shape or weight, these items may cause seals to rip or puncture through packaging if it isn’t designed to contain bulky items.
- Plan for additional costs for special handling and sturdy packaging
- Remove any hanging tags from the outer packaging to avoid rips or snags
- Wrap and tape protrusions or sharp edges to prevent damage
Packing fragile items
Medical supplies can often be fragile. Typically, fragile items have components like gauges, lenses or mirrors that may be easily damaged if not packaged correctly. When packing fragile items, focus on providing extra layers of protection while also ensuring that the items fit securely within the package.
- Double-box each item and use protective packaging to shield against impact
- Choose the right-sized box to ensure a snug fit
- Place items inside carefully so they don’t shift or slide into each other
- Provide ample cushioning to absorb any shocks
Get your items delivered in one piece with these packaging best practices. Check out our packaging guidelines
How Purolator provides effective shipping for healthcare businesses
Your healthcare business requires shipping solutions that are tailored to a diverse range of items and needs. From medical equipment to hazardous materials, you need careful shipping with fast and flexible delivery options. The good news is that Purolator caters to all of the healthcare industry’s needs.
Purolator manages shipments from all medical device classes, adhering to best practices in medical supplies logistics to help ensure safe transport. Our commitment to supporting patient-centred care makes us a reliable partner for clinics and hospitals, even during emergencies. For highly urgent shipments, we offer time-definite services like Mission Critical, flexible medical equipment delivery options to ensure a safer delivery and a reliable closed-loop network.
For example, Purolator delivered 1 million test kits for Switch Health with Mission Critical. Our experts helped Switch Health:
- Reach all their Canadian customers even in remote and rural areas
- Design a national roll-out plan in just 10 days
- Launch a distribution network in six weeks
Learn how Purolator can enhance logistics for healthcare providers in our case study. See the case study
Cross-border medical supply delivery services
Cross-border shipping offers your business a strategic advantage in a competitive market, particularly with medical devices that are in-demand in the United States. However, the process always involves navigating a complex landscape of international regulations.
- Around 75% of the medical device market is made up of imported goods. (Source: International Trade Administration)
- Cardiovascular and respiratory devices make up 22.3% of the market, followed by surgical devices (19.4%), industrial diagnostic devices (18.1%), spinal devices (11.7%) and diabetes monitoring devices (6.3%). (Source: International Trade Administration)
These complex regulatory requirements often make faster deliveries a challenge. Compliance with regulations from Health Canada’s Medical Devices Bureau of the Therapeutic Products Directorate (TPD), the Food and Drugs Act (F&DA) and Canadian Medical Device Regulations (CMDR) are all essential. But keeping track of all these requirements while managing timely healthcare shipments is often difficult, and a single mistake can lead to serious delays.
Partnering with a knowledgeable shipping provider like Purolator can ease the challenge of adhering to regulations, ensuring that your cross-border medical device shipments are delivered efficiently and in compliance with all required standards.
Ship your medical devices securely and confidently. Deliver medical devices
Partner with Purolator for medical courier success
Effectively shipping medical supplies is the key to finding logistics solutions for healthcare industry roadblocks. That’s where a shipping provider like Purolator can come in. We offer specialized solutions designed to overcome medical supply delivery service challenges.
Our comprehensive services include fast and flexible options such as Mission Critical, two-day delivery and time-definite services. Additionally, our closed-loop network supports a more secure and efficient shipping journey for your medical goods. To gain further peace of mind, our Chain of Signature service complies with government regulations for the secure transportation of controlled items. While your goods are in transit, you’ll have complete visibility through email updates and the Purolator mobile app so you always stay informed throughout the shipping process. And when your medical supplies have finally reached their destination, we offer Photo Proof of Delivery services to verify the package’s arrival.
With a dedicated team of shipping experts, Purolator is fully equipped to handle your business’s unique medical shipping needs.