With first Prime Vendor deal now active, Medline Canada enters logistics arena

As one of Canada's largest healthcare procurement groups, Ontario-based Mohawk Medbuy strives to provide its member hospitals what they want. What several of them wanted were better and more consistent levels of service.

So this spring, Mohawk Medbuy secured what no other healthcare organization outside the United States has yet experienced: Medline's full supply-chain support model.

That arrangement, first announced in April , is now coming to life. Starting Aug. 4, Medline Canada began rolling out logistics and distribution services to a regional hub of Mohawk Medbuy member hospitals in southwestern Ontario. Before now, surgical supplies for these hospitals had come via bulk orders from multiple distributors (including Medline Canada) to one central warehouse, where they were broken up and sent to the individual facilities. Last year, these hospitals collectively asked for more robust logistics support, prompting Mohawk Medbuy to search for an outside partner.

That partner, Medline Canada, will handle the hospitals' back-end supply chain lift, customizing orders in low-unit (or "stockless") measure and making direct deliveries almost daily from its distribution center in Guelph, Ontario - not on large skids like before, but in smaller totes that allow supplies to get where they're needed faster and more efficiently.

If this method of distribution sounds familiar, it's because it's also a core part of Medline's Prime Vendor agreements with hundreds of healthcare providers in the United States.

But for Medline Canada, which began operations in 2006, it's a first.

"We've never before done this in Canada in acute care - it's always been big bulk distribution, mostly of national brands," said Scott MacNair, Medline Canada's vice president of acute care. "Now, working with Mohawk Medbuy, we're part of these hospitals' supply chains, adding in true supply chain services. We're more closely aligned with the customers in terms of how they order and their fill rates. Already it's providing a lot more additional value operationally and clinically because we have really good visibility into potential disruptions and things along those lines. We're more fully integrated in the customer supply chain versus just moving a big box from your warehouse to someone else's."

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Medline Canada employees (from left) Adeeb Matrouk, Jot Aujla, Prince Janju, Viraj Patel and Bijith Binu talk through the setup of dedicated logistics space for a group of Mohawk Medbuy hospitals at the Medline Canada distribution center in Guelph, Ontario.

A stretched healthcare system in Canada

The hospitals will have access to what MacNair calls "a suite of services" through Medline's Supply Chains Solutions division: delivery and storage optimization, automatic product substitutions, backorder management with national brands, plus additional data solutions, tools and technologies to boost resiliency.

The offerings are especially pertinent now as the demand for healthcare resources continues to grow. In Canada's universal healthcare system, every dollar must stretch as far as possible. Supply costs are scrutinized, leaving little opportunity for investments in inventory planning and management, logistics and warehousing. Working with a medical supplier that is also a logistics partner can significantly ease the burden on stretched resources in a publicly funded system.

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Guelph employees Mireille Bourgault (left) and Sufyan Siddiqui prepare totes that will be used to deliver medical supplies to the Mohawk Medbuy hospitals in low-unit measure.

So, why Medline Canada and not a competing distributor? MacNair pointed to some of the company's key strengths, including the effectiveness of the Prime Vendor model in the U.S., which Medline Canada emphasized during the bidding process.

Medline Canada also helped Mohawk Medbuy significantly increase its fill rates in the first 90 days of a smaller distribution deal in 2025.

"They got to see how we worked collectively with them as a partner and how we looked at demand planning, tracking and minimizing disruptions," MacNair said. "They also know that Medline has a history of going into markets in the U.S. where this support isn't already being provided and building the teams and infrastructure."

Pulling from a proven playbook

Medline's U.S. teams are working with the teams at Medline Canada's Guelph facility to adjust fulfillment processes to better support lower units of measure. And the potential for more is great. The southwest Ontario hospitals are effectively a test case for determining what else Medline Canada can do for customers in the years ahead.

"This is how we make healthcare run better," said Ernie Philip, president of Medline Canada and Medline Latin America. "We have an agreement with one of Canada's leading sourcing and procurement organizations, and as a trusted adviser around logistics, distribution and other supply chain services, we'll look closely into how we might expand on that partnership to support others inside and outside their network."

MacNair added that throughout Ontario, "word is traveling that we're now in the logistics game."

"There's awareness of the global organization that Medline Canada is part of, our capabilities south of the border and the resources we can tap into," he said. "It's what we do, right? We effectively manage healthcare supply chains. We know what works and what doesn't. We're looking for continuous improvement and opportunities. And I think customers are seeing the possibilities."

Learn more about Medline Canada's scope and services across multiple healthcare sectors.