See how one hospital saved $83k by “checking inside the bag”
A lot has been said about so-called “shrinkflation” in the chip aisle, where major snack brands have reduced the number of chips in the bag instead of increasing the price. When costs go up and consumers don’t want to pay more, shrinkflation is a common strategy used by suppliers across industries to protect margins and keep prices within buyers’ budgets. Recently, some medical equipment OEMs have also been utilizing this approach, quietly de-featuring quotes to create an appearance that prices haven’t changed. This is frustrating for hospitals, but here’s the good news: while it’s almost impossible to check for shrinkflation inside a bag of chips before buying, there’s an easy way to “check inside the bag” when buying medical equipment.
Verify that line-items are identical, even if total cost this year matches total cost last year. If you don’t know that this year’s quote has exactly the same line items as last year’s, you may be disappointed when the product arrives and doesn’t include everything you expected. For quotes with only one line item, this is relatively easy. But most medical equipment quotes have dozens—if not hundreds—of line items. How can you REALLY know? The only way to get a true apples-to-apples comparison is to use a benchmarking system that analyzes quotes row-by-row to uncover discrepancies and avoid unexpected costs.
Recently, a Miga hospital client avoided disappointment (and stress) by “checking inside the bag” of a quote for patient monitors being replaced over multiple years. The 2026 quoted price was the same price per unit as their 2025 price paid; the department leader assumed that an identical price meant an identical configuration, and she was eager to push the deal through. Fortunately, one supply chain capital analyst used Miga EVMS® to analyze the price, which revealed that critical SpO2 cables and sensors had been omitted from this year’s quote. The hospital used this information to push back and insist that the supplier add the missing equipment back into the quote without changing the cost, ensuring that the right configuration was purchased and saving $88,113 in the process.