Local medical supply store dealing with medical equipment shortages

ODESSA, Texas — For 16 years, Grayson Hankins has been the owner of University Medical Supply in Odessa and in all his years of owning this store he says he’s never experienced this big of a backorder and shortage in the product he sells.

“We’ve experienced nearly everything that we sell has had some kind of a shortage or back order problem mainly like wheelchairs, walkers,” Hankins said.  “Those are really hard to get, also crutches. For a while, we couldn’t get crutches for like a month.”  

There’s either a problem in him getting the parts his needs or the item as a whole. 

“Just about everything has had trouble getting either the actual equipment or parts for the equipment,” Hankins said. 

For a year now, his business has been dealing with this issue. 

“They’ll tell you it’ll be here in a month sometimes it’ll be couple months,” Hankins said. “I’ve got one thing I’ve had it ordered for nearly eight months and it’s supposed to be here next week. When it shows up that’s when it gets here. That’s when I’ll be ready for it.” 

An issue that’s making it hard for him to sell much needed walkers or wheelchairs to people who need them. 

“It’s frustrating because we have people come in and they can look on our website or something like that and say ‘oh I need one of those’ and they expect us to have it and we don’t have it and they get really frustrated with that it’s on backorder but it’s not just me it’s everybody,” Hankins said. 

Most times when the trucks arrive to deliver what the store needs, they usually are sold out as quick as they got it in. 

“All of a sudden a truck shows up and we have some wheelchairs and then they go out and we can’t get anymore for a couple weeks,” Hankins said. “It’s a little more predictable but there are still somethings that are almost impossible.”

Since he doesn’t know when the end of this is insight, Hankins tells me he’s just as honest as he can be with his customers.

“I can’t sell what I don’t have,” Hankins said. “I try to be honest with people. I’m getting to a point now where I have a better  feel for different suppliers, if they’re telling me two weeks then it’s three weeks, that’s what I’ll tell them. It’s just varies from supplier to supplier of what’s there and what’s not there.”