by
John R. Fischer, Senior Reporter | February 07, 2022
From the January/February 2022 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
“It's not as if we don't have enough supply,” said Tinglong Dai, a professor of operations management and business analytics at Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School. “We have the goods; but, due to our overall supply chain crunch, they just won’t move to hospitals.”
Ports are jampacked with between 8,000 and 12,000 containers of millions of critical medical supplies. Many are stacked behind containers with less critical resources. As a result, containers with medical supplies have become delayed on average by 37 days, according t a December report from American Shipper. Those delivered by rail are 11 days behind schedule and those by truck are nine days behind.
“That’s why we need a ‘fast pass’ for medical supplies,” said Rowan. “Medical supplies need to be ‘peeled off’ and separated for expedited processing. During a public health emergency, these critical supplies need to go to the front of the line at ports, at rail yards and to access trucking assets.”
Peter Saviola, VP of logistics and supply chain optimization at Medline, suggests partnering with distributors to avoid delays like this. Distributors like Medline, he says, can offer warehouse space for stockpiling critical supplies that can be accessed during emergencies and can help providers save on time, energy and money.
He adds that providers should consider alternative products to use should their preferred option not be available and discuss these choices with distributors. This helps better manage inventory and creates greater supply chain transparency. “Building a tree of product acceptability ultimately builds resiliency within the supply chain and keeps it moving, instead of enduring delays and not having access to products.”
Adopting new strategies
In a white paper published in SupplyChainBrain, Tecsys, a supply chain software company, made the case that hospital leaders must create a patient-centric approach that instructs employees, including those outside of hands-on patient care, on how to make decisions on supply chain issues that will ensure efficient healthcare delivery to patients “It takes the clinical and operational sides of an organization to come together in a collaborative fashion to deliver the highest quality of affordable care,” they wrote.
To do this, hospitals, manufacturers, distributors and other stakeholders must adjust their views and practices around supply chain management.
“We’re training our teams at every level to think critically about resource distribution, rather than just reactively moving resources from one location to another,” said Mark Welch, SVP of supply chain at Novant Health. “Additionally, we’re diversifying our vendor base, which allows our procurement team to be more flexible in order to meet the needs of our clinicians. Our clinicians are more aware of supply challenges and are willing to use different brands of similar products.”
