What Is a Stent? The Medical Device Confusion That Cost Us $4,800
Tuesday, 9:14 AM. A request lands in our ordering system: "Patient asking if she needs a stent. Which Coloplast product do we use?"
She didn't need a stent. She needed a urinary catheter. The nurse who wrote the note wasn't careless—she was honest. She didn't know the difference, and in my first year, neither did I.
I'm the clinical supply coordinator at a four-hospital health system. I've been handling Coloplast orders and other chronic-care device orders for six years now—and I've personally made, and documented, 17 significant mistakes in that time. Roughly $23,000 in wasted budget, give or take. This article is about the most expensive one, and the confusion behind it that keeps showing up on my desk.
The Problem Isn't What You Think It Is
Whenever someone asks "how do I use Coloplast products?", my first thought is always: which one? Coloplast makes ostomy pouches, urinary catheters, wound dressings, and skin-care products—each with a completely different application, training, and evidence base. The question "how do I use Coloplast" is like asking "how do I use tools?"
But that's the surface problem. The real issue underneath is category confusion. Patients and clinicians reach for the closest vocabulary word they know:
- "Stent" gets used for any tube-like thing in the body.
- "Surgical instrument" gets used for any device that touches a patient.
- "Pulse oximeter" gets used as a stand-in for "any medical technology."
I do not mean this as a criticism. I mean it as a warning to the people who approve the orders. When you guess wrong on a category, you don't just waste money. You waste time—sometimes clinically significant time.
Where the Confusion Actually Comes From
After the sixth or seventh similar mix-up, I started documenting not just the mistake, but the path that led to it. Three patterns kept coming up.
The Vocabulary Gap
A stent, to be clear, is a tiny mesh scaffold that holds a passage open—an artery, a bile duct, a ureter. A catheter is a flexible tube that drains fluid or delivers medication. A pulse oximeter is a sensor that measures oxygen saturation. A surgical instrument is a tool used during a procedure. None of these are the same thing. But to a patient looking at a medical diagram at 11 PM, they're all just "tube thing" or "sensor thing."
That gap is normal. It becomes a problem when it's bridged by guesswork instead of verification.
Search Engines Amplify the Gap
When someone types "what is a stent" into Google, they get articles, ads, and pages full of medical device companies. If Coloplast shows up in those results—say, because the person was also searching for urology products—the assumption becomes "Coloplast makes stents." It doesn't. Coloplast makes specific things very well: ostomy, continence, wound, and skin care. When a request lands on my desk asking whether Coloplast can supply a pulse oximeter, the answer is no, and now I've lost ten minutes explaining how device classification works.
I have mixed feelings about search engines in healthcare. On one hand, they've made medical information more accessible than ever. On the other hand, they're a big part of why a nurse ends up typing "what is a stent" when she really needs to know how to use Coloplast continence products. The search results don't know the difference, and neither does the person reading them. That's the gap I'm trying to fill, and it's not gonna close by itself.
Specialty Silos
Here's the uncomfortable part. The nurse who asked about the stent wasn't confused because she was new. She was a competent urology nurse. But her patient had a history that included abdominal aneurysm repair, so the word "stent" entered the conversation from a vascular context, while the actual need—a continence product—stayed hidden. Specialists know their own silo. My job is to be the one who looks across silos.
I learned this the hard way. In my first year, 2019, I made the classic specification error: I processed a request for "surgical instruments" for the wound care clinic without checking what the procedure actually was. I approved a standard suture and scalpel kit. The clinic wanted Biatain dressings and a skin assessment tool. The kit sat unopened in a storeroom. Cost me a $600 restocking fee and a very quiet month walking past that clinic.
What This Confusion Actually Costs
Let me give you the biggest number first. In September 2022, I approved a "multi-purpose clinic cart" that combined ostomy supplies, continence care, a surgical instrument kit, and a pulse oximeter. I checked the total. I checked the budget line. I did not check the categories.
The ostomy and continence items were Coloplast products and arrived fine. The "surgical instrument kit" didn't match the clinic's procedure list at all. And the pulse oximeter—well, Coloplast doesn't make pulse oximeters. I knew that. I just didn't look.
The redo cost us $4,800 in restocking fees and expedited shipping. Actually, the invoice says $4,732, but I add the internal labor when I think about it, so $4,800 is the number I use. That was my mistake, not a vendor's. It's on my documented list, and it's the reason I built the category check into everything we do.
But the money is only the obvious cost. Here's what the receipts don't show.
The Delay Cost
In March 2023, the wound clinic needed a dressing they'd used before. The ordering physician wrote "surgical dressing supplies," and procurement routed it through the surgical instrument category, adding three days of approval delay. Three days where a chronic wound went without the correct dressing. The patient wasn't harmed, by luck. But the physician's confidence in our process was damaged, and that kind of damage doesn't show up on a budget report.
The Evidence Cost
A new hospitalist once rejected our recommended catheter protocol because she "hadn't seen Coloplast clinical studies." She wasn't rejecting the product—she was rejecting the lack of evidence in front of her. That's fair. The problem was, we had the evidence. Nobody on our team had pulled it. A twenty-minute search of Coloplast's published clinical studies would have answered every question she had. Instead, we spent two weeks evaluating a competitor's product we ultimately didn't adopt. The samples were free. The clinical hours weren't.
The "Penny Wise" Cost
And then there's my favorite kind of bad decision: saving money the wrong way. In that same first year, I convinced my boss to drop our device classification database subscription—$200 a month—and use a free online directory instead. The directory was fine until it wasn't. The pulse oximeter confusion alone cost more than two years of that subscription. We resubscribed. I don't even look at the invoice anymore.
My documented total across six years is about $23,000. Maybe $22,400—I'd have to check the spreadsheet, and honestly I don't want to relive the September 2022 row. Either way: too much.
The Fix: A Checklist and One Honest Question
The fix wasn't complicated, and it didn't require a new team. It required admitting that "stent," "catheter," and "pulse oximeter" are not interchangeable—and that checking is always faster than correcting.
Before any order moves forward, someone on my team answers three questions:
- What is the clinician's stated intent?
- What is the actual product category, per FDA classification rather than the requester's wording?
- Does the category match the intent?
That's all. The magic isn't in the questions; it's in the rule that nobody can skip them. Since we started, we've caught 47 potential errors. Maybe 43 were unambiguous. The log says 47, and I'll take it.
How to Use Coloplast Products Correctly
The first step in learning how to use Coloplast products is confirming which product and why. Coloplast publishes instructions and video guides for each line—SenSura Mio ostomy pouches, SpeediCath catheters, Biatain wound dressings. But no instruction sheet helps if you've been handed the wrong category. Read the Instructions for Use. But read the clinician's intent first.
Coloplast Clinical Studies Are the Ground Truth
If anyone asks whether a product is appropriate, go to the evidence. Coloplast has published clinical studies across their major product lines, and they're public. Per FTC business guidance, device claims must be truthful and substantiated. That's a floor, not a ceiling. You want the clinical study, not the brochure.
Efficiency Is the Point
We mail roughly 30 patient education packets a month, and with USPS large-envelope rates at $1.50 for the first ounce as of January 2025, that's around $540 a year in postage—the line item I watch. But the postage isn't the real cost. The real cost is if the packet contains the wrong information. A "stent recovery" handout sent to a catheter patient isn't just useless; it's damaging.
The most effective change was digital. Our procurement system now flags a mismatch between the requester's department and the product category before approval. A dermatology clinic ordering a pulse oximeter? Flagged. A urology nurse ordering a "stent"? Flagged. It's not artificial intelligence. It's a lookup table with rules, and it works.
This process cut our order turnaround from five days to two. I hear people worry that automation erases clinical judgment. It doesn't. It frees judgment up for the cases that actually need it.
So, what is a stent? It's a mesh scaffold. It is not a catheter, not a dressing, and definitely not a pulse oximeter. But the more useful answer is this: if you're asking the question, don't guess. Confirm the category. Verify the intent. Check the evidence.
I've got the scars from guessing—seventeen of them, documented, at roughly $23,000. I'd rather you didn't add yours.