Airbase vs Procurify for Multi-Hospital Veterinary Groups

Controlled substance ordering usually already runs through a DEA-registered process with its own logging requirements, and neither Airbase nor Procurify should replace that system. Keep it separate. What both tools can help with is the much larger volume of general pharmaceuticals, surgical consumables, and diagnostic supplies that don't carry the same regulatory overhead but still need visibility across hospitals.

A hospital that's out of a common surgical consumable on a Tuesday afternoon can't wait for a multi-day approval chain. Set a card or requisition limit per hospital that covers routine restocking without a case-by-case sign-off, and reserve actual approval routing for purchases above that threshold or for new vendor relationships. Procurify's requisition workflow is built around this kind of tiered threshold; Airbase gets there through card limits assigned by location. Whichever you choose, set the limit based on that hospital's actual historical volume rather than a flat number applied across every location, since a busy small-animal hospital and a lower-volume satellite clinic don't consume supplies at anything close to the same rate.

Centralized purchasing only produces better distributor terms if the group is actually consolidating volume with fewer vendors. Before pushing every hospital onto one procurement tool, get agreement on a shared list of approved pharmaceutical and supply distributors. Otherwise you end up with one tool but the same fragmented vendor relationships you had before, just tracked more consistently.

Surgical equipment, imaging equipment, and other capital purchases behave nothing like routine pharmaceutical restocking; they're infrequent, high dollar, and usually involve a multi-hospital decision about where the equipment will live. Give these their own approval tier with sign-off from whoever owns capital budgeting for the group, not the same person approving a hospital's weekly supply order.

Most veterinary practice management systems track inventory counts independently of whatever tool handles purchasing. Set a recurring reconciliation, monthly is usually enough, comparing what was purchased against what the practice management system shows as used or on hand, so drift gets caught before it becomes a write-off at year end.

Pilot with two hospitals first, one urban and higher volume, one smaller, before extending to the full group. Confirm that hospital managers actually find the mobile request path faster than calling their usual distributor rep, and that your controller can pull spend by hospital and category without manual reconciliation. If the pilot hospitals quietly revert to old habits within a month, that's a sign the approval threshold is set too tight, not that the tool is wrong for your group.

Check these points before extending the rollout to every hospital:

• Pilot with two hospitals first, one urban and higher volume and one smaller, before extending to the full group.
• Confirm hospital managers find the mobile request path faster than calling their usual distributor rep.
• Check that your controller can pull spend by hospital and category without manual reconciliation.
• Keep controlled substance ordering in its existing DEA-compliant process, outside the new tool.
• Agree on a shared list of approved distributors before pushing every hospital onto one procurement tool.

A hospital handling an overnight emergency surgery can't wait on a standard approval chain for a needed surgical consumable, and building a purchasing process that ignores this reality guarantees it gets bypassed exactly when it matters most. Set a separate, higher after-hours limit tied to on-call staff, reviewed the next business day rather than requiring real-time approval, so urgent cases don't turn into a reason to abandon the system entirely.

If the group includes a specialty or emergency referral hospital alongside general practice locations, don't assume a single purchasing profile fits both. A specialty hospital's surgical and diagnostic supply mix looks nothing like a general practice's routine vaccine and wellness inventory, and forcing both onto identical spend limits and vendor lists either constrains the specialty hospital or leaves excess purchasing authority sitting unused at general practice locations. Set limits and approved vendor lists by hospital type, not by a single group-wide default.

Waste and expiration tracking connects back to this same discipline: pharmaceuticals and biologics that expire before they're used are a real cost, and the root cause is often over-ordering driven by a hospital manager stocking up out of habit rather than actual usage patterns. Tie your purchase order review to expiration data from the practice management system where possible, so a hospital that consistently over-orders a slow-moving product gets flagged before the waste repeats month after month.