What You Should Know:

• Three years after COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency, many healthcare supply chain leaders and frontline professionals are operating in survival mode, according to new industry research from Deloitte Consulting LLP.
• Ongoing challenges include economic pressures, multiple resource shortages, data visibility and labor issues.

Key Findings

To gain greater insight into these impacts, Deloitte expanded its study by conducting site visits to healthcare facilities, interviewing frontline professionals and re-interviewing supply chain leaders in private and public sectors across government, healthcare, academic institutions, and humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from November 2022 to March 2023.

Key findings include:

• 70% of interviewees cited data visibility as a concern.
• 73% of those interviewed indicated that disruption is the expectation, impacting their ability to focus on strategic initiatives, such as health equity.
• 60% of post-pandemic interviewees believe that healthcare supply chain will remain a focus for their organizations.

3 Recommendations to Increase Healthcare Supply Chain Resilience

To increase healthcare supply chain resilience and enable healthcare organizations to focus more on implementing long-term strategic initiatives, Deloitte recommends:

1. Developing a robust risk management framework and continuously monitoring supply networks to prepare for possible disruptions.
2. Focusing first on supplier relationship management for critical products.
3. Leveraging a Human-Centered Design approach to identify opportunities for improvement.

What You Should Know:

– Today, Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX) announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Pittsburgh, Penn.-based Prodigo Solutions, Inc. (Prodigo), a supply chain and data enablement technology company.

– Prodigo was founded in 2008 by UPMC, the world-renowned Pittsburgh-based healthcare provider and insurer. Prodigo’s offerings help to broaden the healthcare supply chain’s span of control, expanding the potential for savings across multiple categories of spend (including non-traditional categories such as purchased services, minor equipment, and labor) and across a quickly expanding continuum of care (including acute, nonacute, clinics, offices, and direct-to-patient care). 

– Prodigo shapes demand by directing spending toward contractually compliant and cost-optimized product options during the procurement process.

Through years of disruption and advancement, the retail industry has evolved tremendously to meet the increased demands of a broadening consumer base. However not every industry – and most notably healthcare — has progressed with the times and buyers’ needs.

The healthcare supply chain specifically must expand beyond its antiquated roots to better serve buyers. Just as in retail, where the U.S. has seen exponential growth over the last 20 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the healthcare supply chain must, too, adopt a new model. A model with technology integration has been tested in retail to show improved efficiencies and experience for buyers.

Below are a few key lessons from the retail industry that healthcare supply chain leaders need to adopt in order to move their model forward: 

1. A Better Customer Experience

The retail space has grown exponentially through the number of brands and products on the shelf compared to 20 years ago and through the advent of Amazon. The buying process has become consumer-driven, rather than through in-person ordering with a salesman. Consumers are more inclined to choose a simplified shopping encounter like that of the Apple App Store, which has created an instantaneous, click-of-a-button shopping experience. This innovation has provided significantly more convenience and set new customer expectations. 

Healthcare companies can follow suit to reduce friction in a similar way, meeting the demand of an emerging spectrum of customers – from hospitals to individual patients – for an increasingly automated purchasing environment.

2. Automation and Cost Savings

The retail industry has redefined the shopping experience through artificial intelligence and warehouse automation, making it a prime example for what other industries can implement to drive better customer interactions. 

The healthcare supply chain, on the other hand, has been widely left out of digital transformation. By taking a more modern and flexible approach, it can improve the buying process through incorporating technology pioneered outside of healthcare.

With technology and economies of scale, prices for goods can be driven down. Those cost savings can be passed along to the customer and invested into the company to further implement technology. 

3. Price Transparency and Data Tracing

Tools that allow price transparency and data tracing create peace of mind for both the customer and organization. Large online retail marketplaces provide an easy example of structured ordering and tracking. This model creates trust and provides on-demand purchase details, along with shipment tracking information. The healthcare industry has an opportunity to take those lessons and apply them – particularly when it comes to the purchasing of medical supplies Examples like UberEats, with its well-established processes, allow for swift delivery and accessible tracking and customer services.

Buyers from the healthcare market don’t have access to the same receipt details or order history, as the process still widely involves third-party catalog shopping. This results in extra red tape, requiring buyers to contact customer support for issues that could be automated.

Incorporating consistency and transparency into the healthcare supply system will improve the purchase experience while reducing customer service costs. 

4. Commercialization and Digitization 

The retail industry created an incredibly successful model for online purchasing and engagement. The healthcare supply chain lacks that kind of proven system. 

For an example, look at vaccine patents. When vaccines (or any drug for that matter) are accessible to the public market, it allows for many companies to bring the not-so-secret formula to life, empowering commercialization. With more competition, and a better backbone of a system, the price for the vaccine or drug plummets.

Envision a future where all healthcare supplies are accessible in online marketplaces — no more needless time wasted flipping through catalogs. Through commercialization and the digitization of systems, buyers can find everything they need online.

The retail industry has undergone seismic shifts to meet changing demand. The days of department store browsing have long been in decline, as evidenced by a decrease in revenue from brick-and-mortar stores. To meet this challenge, the integration of technology has vastly improved the consumer experience. As the Amazon model illustrates, consumers’ demands and urge to shop remains, but there is a need to shift that experience.

To advance, it’s essential that the healthcare marketplace remains adaptable to meet the demands of the consumer experience and be a part of the online marketplace revolution. Leveraging the lessons from the retail industry, healthcare marketplaces can improve the buyer experience. This will enhance care and reduce spending costs across health verticals. 

About JT Garwood

JT Garwood is the CEO and Co-founder of bttn, a Seattle-based technology company transforming medical supply chain distribution through e-commerce and digital solutions. Garwood is a two-time marketplace founder, angel investor and active advisor to U.S. startups.

What You Should Know:

– GHX Lumere announced the launch of its consulting service to support healthcare providers that want to optimize savings and reduce clinical variation.

– This premium service combines clinical expertise, data, evidence and technology to help hospitals and health systems improve supply chain performance. 

Lumere Consulting Services Offering

As hospital operating margins continue to lag, many organizations are looking to achieve savings through clinically integrated strategic sourcing projects. Lumere’s Consulting Services help to alleviate capacity constraints caused by ongoing staffing shortages and accelerate speed to value by providing supply chain teams with dedicated project management support. Lumere’s team of experienced consultants help project stakeholders develop evidence-based sourcing and utilization goals and then work with physicians to gain alignment on these cost-reduction strategies. This work, done on-site, virtually or in a hybrid capacity, supports the creation of a repeatable framework enabling health systems to implement and scale future cost-saving initiatives without the need for additional consulting support. 

The consulting services include: 

– Strategic Clinical Sourcing Consulting: Focused on managing clinically intensive strategic sourcing and utilization projects for physician preference item (PPI) categories, such as orthopedics and cardiovascular service lines. 

– Value Analysis Governance: Focused on developing industry-standard clinical value analysis programs by helping organizations determine the policies they need in place, what team members should be involved and how to go beyond the supply chain department to create a true culture of evidence-based value analysis system-wide. 

What You Should Know:

GHX today announced its annual list of the Best 50 supply chains, which recognizes the highest performing healthcare provider organizations in North America. These honorees set the standard for supply chain excellence by improving operational performance while driving down costs through supply chain automation.

Healthcare Providers Modernizing Supply Chain Operations

Selected among more than 4,100 hospitals connected to the GHX digital trading network (Exchange) in the U.S. and Canada, the Best 50 winners scored highest in critical areas including maximizing automation, increasing Exchange utilization and trading partner connections during the 2021 calendar year.

The 2021 GHX Best 50 winners are as follows (listed in alphabetical order):

Aspirus, Inc. (Wausau, Wis.)

Baptist Health (Little Rock, Ark.)

Bellin Health (Green Bay, Wis.)

Blanchard Valley Health System (Findlay, Ohio)

Cedars-Sinai (Los Angeles, Calif.)

Community Medical Centers (Fresno, Calif.)

Edward-Elmhurst Health (Naperville, Ill.)

El Camino Health (Mountain View, Calif.)

Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System (Baton Rouge, La.)

Greater Baltimore Medical Center (Baltimore, Md.)

Hackensack Meridian Health (Hackensack, N.J.)

Houston Methodist Hospital (Houston, Texas)

Lehigh Valley Health Network (Allentown, Pa.)

Loma Linda University Health (Loma Linda, Calif.)

Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (Los Angeles, Calif.)

MedStar Health (Baltimore, Md.)

MetroHealth System (Cleveland, Ohio)

Michigan Medicine (Ann Arbor, Mich.)

MultiCare Health System (Tacoma, Wash.)

Nebraska Methodist Health System (Omaha, Neb.)

NYU Langone Health (New York, N.Y.)

Parkland Health (Dallas, Texas)

Riverside Health System (Newport News, Va.)

Rush University Medical Center (Chicago, Ill.)

RWJBarnabas Health (Oceanport, N.J.)

San Antonio Regional Hospital (Upland, Calif.)

Scripps Health (San Diego, Calif.)

Sentara Healthcare (Norfolk, Va.)

Southwest General Health Center (Middleburg Heights, Ohio)

St. Luke’s Health System (Boise, Idaho)

Stanford Health Care (Palo Alto, Calif.)

Summa Health (Akron, Ohio)

Tampa General Hospital (Tampa, Fla.)

Tucson Medical Center (Tucson, Ariz.)

UC Davis Health (Sacramento, Calif.)

UC San Diego Health (San Diego, Calif.)

UCHealth (Aurora, Colo.)

UCI Health (Fullerton, Calif.)

UCLA Health (Los Angeles, Calif.)

UCSF Health (San Francisco, Calif.)

UF Health (Jacksonville, Fla.)

UHS N.Y. (Binghamton, N.Y.)

UMC Health System (Lubbock, Texas)

UNC Health (Chapel Hill, N.C.)

University of Utah Health (Salt Lake City, Utah)

UVA Health (Charlottesville, Va.)

UW Medicine – Harborview Medical Center (Seattle, Wash.)

UW Medicine – University of Washington Medical Center (Seattle, Wash.)

Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville, Tenn.)

Yale New Haven Health System (New Haven, Conn.)

Selection Criteria/Methodology

Criteria period for consideration as a Best 50 honoree is a full calendar year (January 1 – December 31, 2021). To qualify, providers must have:

– Four complete closed quarters on the GHX Exchange (from first PO date)

– More than 10,000 PO lines processed annually

Best 50 providers are ranked for each of the following “big three” exception types (the lower the exception rate, the higher the rank):

– Price Exception (price exceptions/PO lines)

– SKU Exception (SKU exceptions/PO lines)

– UOM Exception (UOM exceptions/PO lines)

Rankings also consider gross transaction volume (GTV) per bed (i.e., PO GTV / staffed beds) and total number of PO trading partners.

What You Should Know:

– Today GHX announced its acquisition of Syft, a leading provider of AI-enhanced inventory control and end-to-end supply chain management software and services. 

– As a wholly-owned subsidiary of GHX, Syft joins GHX’s value-based care division’s growing portfolio of solutions that help modernize the supply chain.

Modernizing Healthcare Supply Chain to Overcome COVID-19 Related Challenges

As health systems shift to value-based care as well as overcome COVID-19-related challenges, it’s vital to modernize the supply chain with the technology, processes and people needed for data-driven decision-making, end-to-end visibility, automation and collaboration. – Syft helps health systems remove complexity and optimize the supply chain from dock-to-doc – from warehousing and distribution to the clinical point of use. Combining Syft’s approach to automation-driven supply chain management with GHX’s extensive network and collection of data will help healthcare leaders transform the supply chain to better meet the demands of a value-based future.  

Syft represents the third acquisition GHX has made in the last two years that is focused on advancing healthcare’s movement to value-based care. In October 2021, GHX added Explorer Surgical, operator of a comprehensive digital and remote case support platform, and Lumere, provider of evidence-based data and analytics, in January 2020. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP acted as legal advisor to GHX. McDermott Will & Emery acted as legal advisor to Syft. 

“To combat these challenges and accelerate the shift to value-based care, health systems need to transform the supply chain from a cost center to a value-driver,” said Bruce Johnson, president and CEO, GHX. “Forward-thinking leaders are investing in the digital transformation of the supply chain with the technology, data and processes required for greater collaboration, automation, visibility and data-driven decision-making. Syft provides the data and insight health systems need to reduce costs, improve efficiency and support care transformation.”

The ongoing shortage of COVID-19-related masks and personal protective equipment (PPE) has sent shockwaves through the healthcare industry; we’ve all seen the newscasts and forecasts predicting these supply chain disruptions aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Since China implemented its first lockdown at the start of the pandemic, it created a cascading effect of redirecting a reduced supply to their own country amplifying supply chain issues around the world – and unprepared hospitals have been caught in the crossfire.

These shortages are also undeniable proof that the benefits of proactive supply chain management in healthcare are considerable, and certainly not to be understated in our current climate. The “just in time” supply chain model – a strategy that aligns distributor orders with demand to ultimately reduce inventory costs for healthcare providers – has long been proven to be ineffective for healthcare systems interested in protecting themselves against shortages.

The “just in time” model has driven up costs of supplies, cost hospitals more money than ever before, and hampered healthcare organizations nationwide as they attempt to provide life-saving care to those who need it most. The pandemic has given a greater focus and attention to the direct sourcing and self-distribution model – and now is the time for health systems that have been on the fence about self-distribution to take action.

A Broken Model

For instance, a customer at a large medical system in North Carolina realized that their healthcare center’s distribution practices weren’t where they needed to be in the event of a supply chain disruption. It was only through a data-driven, focused effort to optimize the hospitals’ centralized warehouse operations that they were able to ensure the health system would be poised to respond well to disruptions.

It is important to consider your healthcare supply chain as if it is a business supporting healthcare. While this industry has faced supply chain disruption before, the COVID-19 pandemic crippled distributors and brought unprecedented shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE). Rather than working proactively to craft direct relationships with manufacturers, hospitals and other facilities prioritized ordering the materials they needed and did not store adequate supplies of gloves, masks, and other vital care tools and products.

Prior to COVID-19, the “just in time” supply chain model had a certain appeal; hospitals often lacked storage space to take on any more product than they felt they actually needed and preferred to use space that could be used to hold bulk quantities of PPE for more patient beds and care facilities.

However, now that the supply chain has been disrupted to an unprecedented degree, the long-term impacts of COVID-19 are making themselves apparent through the supply chain, and many health systems are realizing the benefit that direct relationships with suppliers can provide. Maintaining a pulse on the supply chain has never been more important than now – especially since lives can be on the line if your organization runs out of PPE and other vital caregiving equipment.

The Power of Direct Sourcing

While keeping a massive inventory buffer may feel inconvenient – it is, by far, the smartest and safest move for your organization. Adopting a direct sourcing model is the best way to ensure your organization gets the products it needs at a sustainable cost, while also ensuring you won’t fall prey to future disruptions.

That said, if you’re sourcing only from a single supplier, you’re still falling prey to a pre-COVID-19 supply chain mindset. The only way to be absolutely sure your organization will be able to withstand the tail end of the pandemic-caused disruption – and any other disruption that comes after – is to ensure you are minimizing your risk. Having backup suppliers in place for first, second, and even third-tier suppliers will ensure that you stay abreast of any possible disruptions that could cripple your organization now and in the future.

If you are directly connected to your suppliers, without the middleman of a distributor, then you will be better able to set aside time on a quarterly basis to review data to determine if your supply chain is working as cost-effectively and holistically as your organization needs in order to be successful.

Prioritizing these checkups is crucial to ongoing success as it allows you to continue to check in on and refine processes, both to adjust to the fluid post-pandemic supply chains, but also to ensure that your organization is poised to adapt to the next big disruption.

And if your organization feels unprepared to tackle these challenges on its own? That’s when it’s time to get help.

The challenges that the last year presented have made the best case for why the “just in time” method should no longer be the norm for health systems. COVID-19 has proven without a doubt that the supply chain industry is fragile, and health systems need extra supplies on hand to combat present and future delays and disruptions. By employing direct sourcing and self-distribution models within your organization, you will ensure that your staff and administration are equipped in the fight against COVID-19 and that your organization is prepared for any future supply chain disruptions that could otherwise hamper your facilities and employees.

About Matt Stewart

Matt is a senior executive with a proven track record of success in starting, growing, and leading consulting firms over his 20-year career. Matt’s unique ability to see what others do not yet see; predict trends before they become trends; identify, recruit, and retain the best consultants and team members; and build a culture in which top performers desire to stay long-term makes RiseNow stand out as a premier supply chain consulting firm. 

Under Matt’s leadership, RiseNow has become a market leader and experienced substantial growth over the past seven years. He attributes this to unwavering faith and pursuit to be transparent, honest, and accountable with clients, partners, employees, and vendors. Some of Matt’s clients include PPG, IBM, Kaiser Permanente, Trinity Health, and McDonald’s to name a few.

What You Should Know:

– GHX, a healthcare supply chain leader announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to receive a strategic investment from private equity firm Warburg Pincus. As part of this transaction, minority investor Thoma Bravo has exited its investment. Existing investor Temasek, an investment company headquartered in Singapore, will remain the majority equity holder.

– GHX has employees in the United States, Canada and Europe and is known for operating the largest healthcare trading network representing more than 80% of licensed beds in the U.S. and more than 85% of med-surg products flow through the platform. Following its acquisition of Lumere in 2020, GHX also operates the largest unified data core of item, vendor, transaction data and clinical evidence. The company’s expertise in data and analytics helps supply chain, clinical and financial teams around the world make more informed decisions.

– The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. J.P. Morgan Securities LLC acted as exclusive financial advisor to GHX, and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP acted as legal advisor to GHX.

What You Should Know:

– UPS Healthcare today announced it is enhancing its specialty pharmaceutical offerings by establishing UPS Cold Chain Solutions, a comprehensive suite of cold chain technologies, best-in-class capabilities to support healthcare customers. 

– UPS Cold Chain Solutions is purpose-built to provide pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers and laboratories a full, end-to-end cold chain service offering, including storage and distribution, transportation, visibility, and quality assurance capabilities to meet their complex demands for critical products around the world.

Why It Matters

Chronic and life-threatening diseases, including cancers, respiratory, autoimmune and cardiovascular conditions, are the fastest growing disease categories in the world, creating a rapid acceleration in the development of biologically derived, temperature-controlled drugs and therapies. According to the Biopharma Cold Chain Sourcebook, cold chain trends show 48 percent growth between 2018 and 2024 for drugs that require at least 2 to 8 degrees Celsius storage and shipping. Additionally, the overall market for cold chain services (packaging, transportation and data services) is expected to significantly accelerate growth over the next three years, growing by 24 percent by 2024, after posting a 10 percent increase from 2019 to 2020.

 UPS Cold Chain Solution Capabilities

UPS Cold Chain Solutions is part of an aggressive strategy for UPS Healthcare to expand its offerings and capabilities, including: 

·       Powerful temperature-controlled storage capacities 

·       Storage and package customization for customers 

·       UPS European Cold Chain Ground Network expansion – ground fleets, dedicated experts on-site, etc.   

·       Transportation efficiencies through unique delivery options 

·       Precise monitoring with UPS® Premier technology 

·       The construction of new GDP-compliant, healthcare-licensed distribution (HLD) facilities, as well expansions and cold chain retrofit projects to existing facilities  

“Our customers have been taking advantage of our cold chain capabilities for years, but the pandemic caused UPS to move even faster to enhance an integrated set of cold chain solutions to support the future of the pharmaceutical and medical device industry,” said Wes Wheeler, UPS Healthcare president. “UPS’s near-perfect, on-time delivery of the COVID-19 vaccine proves how effectively and efficiently our network handles biologically derived drugs, even at extreme temperatures.”

“UPS sets a high bar for excellence in cold chain delivery and logistics, and these current and future investments in innovative solutions will ensure we keep pushing the bar higher,” Wheeler said. “For our customers, we will remain focused on delivering on our commitment to ‘Quality Focused. Patient Driven.’”

In a world where technology and Big Data can provide us with instantaneous access to our banking transactions, and our financial information and credit reports can be retrieved with a few keystrokes when applying for a mortgage — trying to get access to our own healthcare data is exasperating.  Beyond exasperating, is the frightening situation when the inability to access up-to-date and accurate information, can result in an aggravated medical condition or even death.

Before the pandemic, patients and their families or caregivers have had to struggle to get access to their medical history and go through countless machinations to share their records with other medical providers. With COVID, what was already a significant problem, has become a monumental issue as healthcare organizations race to share the information they are gathering about the virus.

Patients need access to their healthcare data so they can learn their risks if they become infected – do they have comorbidities that could cause breathing or cardiovascular problems for example –or as vaccines become available, what in their records indicate that they are eligible to apply for the earliest groupings for vaccination.

COVID has exposed the dire need for a better system of healthcare data sharing. As we inch our way towards a post-COVID society, we can no longer accept the mediocrity, disinformation, and ineptness that has plagued patient healthcare data to date or ignore its vital importance in helping save lives. Individuals need easy access to all of their health records and they need to be able to control how it is shared.

Real-Time Access to Data

Patients want access to their healthcare records in much the same way as they conduct banking transactions, and they want control over who can see and use the data. While one medical facility may have an online portal that tracks visits, medications, and test results, it won’t have patient healthcare data from another facility. Maybe a patient wants to share their data about their cancer or diabetes care with a research center.

It could even be something as simple as sharing their diagnosis with marketing agencies so the patient can find better deals on the products they need. Because it is the patient’s data, they should have ownership of it all regardless of provider and be the one who determines who can access that information and how it can be shared.

Patients who opt-in to share their healthcare data could facilitate research and free companies to work with others in the industry. Innovative new products and care techniques could be readily shared with patients who want to be informed, as well as allow better collaboration between health providers, medical manufacturers, and even insurance companies.

Real-Time Offers Freedom

Offering a one-stop portal or app for patient information would allow for real-time data access. No more waiting days for test results or playing email tag with doctors. Covid vaccinations are an example of putting real-time data sharing into action. When someone gets their Covid vaccine, that information can be put directly into the person’s patient database and immediately added to records available not only to the primary care doctor but also accessed by the patient to present that data at work or at the airport in order to board a plane. This kind of accessibility unlocks the patient’s freedom to do what they want based on the ability to provide instant proof of any part of their health records.

But What Exactly is Patient Data?

Patient data used to be defined asidentifiable information, health statistics, and health events, but in this day and age, patient data is so much more than that.  It’s a patient’s Apple watch, weight scale, connected glucose monitor, any remote patient system, it could even be Alexa or a patient’s spend data. Healthcare is really split up into three worlds, reactionary, predictive, and disease.  Reactionary healthcare is when an event happens, and a person has to see a doctor, and when data is needed in real-time. 

Predictive or preventative healthcare is usually focused on chronic diseases and in this scenario, the data that is needed typically requires a lot of different providers coming together to collaboratively manage a patient’s care.  With healthcare management of a disease, whether cancer or some other event that requires treatment over time, active awareness and alerts of a patient’s healthcare data is critical in making sure a negative event won’t happen.

Healthcare data is much more complex these days and wearable computers, quantified self initiatives pioneered at MIT are in use to help manage patient care, but we still don’t have the best solutions for a trusted medical network to access necessary data in real-time and in a flat way.

Interoperability of Healthcare

Providers and payers are currently the mediators of a patient’s data. And that data resides in a hodgepodge of archaic forms: pen, paper, fax, and mailing statements. Some providers and payers have adopted log-ins, but are still challenged by the simple task of downloading a PDF and emailing that to another doctor, as the other facility requires that it be faxed.

Trying to coordinate the information between healthcare systems or even product to product companies, for example, if a patient has a Dexcom CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring) and switches to Medtronic’s CGM because their insurance reimbursement changes as a result of their having a new employer, is impossible since none of their healthcare data is transferred. The key is to make healthcare data interoperable, allow patients to have control of their data, and do it in a safe, accountable, and transparent way.

How Blockchain Fits in Health Data Records

The need for easily accessible personal healthcare databases is clear. How to create this system effectively and efficiently is the biggest obstacle. The solution may be found in blockchain. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has conducted research to address the problem of Electronic Health Records (EHR) held across multiple disconnected systems and come up with ways to connect them.

“Individual patients are identified by unique certificates issued by local certificate authorities that collaborate with each other in a channel of the network,” the research states. “The results demonstrated that our system can be used by doctors to find patient’s records and verify patient’s consent on access to the data. Patients also can seamlessly receive their past records from other hospitals.”

While this is progress toward a more universal database, it doesn’t address the need for a database designed specifically for patient use or to give them control over how their personal healthcare data is used. The goal is to have a system where the patient can give permission to what can be shared and who it can be shared with upfront, reducing or even eliminating the friction we currently see in healthcare data access making for a more repeatable ecosystem that flattens the sharing of healthcare data for the good of the patient.

Rather than taking days or weeks for information to be shared, everything can be done in real-time. Imagine a cancer patient that would like to share their data with Johnson & Johnson in helping make a new cancer drug, being able to monetize their data if that drug is successful. This is the kind of real-time data sharing — based on patient consent — that could help accelerate medical advancement and patient remuneration at the same time helping create a win-win.

In pre-Covid times, patients accepted the frustration that came with access to their healthcare data as par for the course. This can no longer be acceptable. When it comes to healthcare data, patients must be able to access all their own information in real-time and have the control to share it with whom they want.  We have the technology and we have the Big Data – let’s get it done. Lives are at stake.

About Birju Shah and Nick Jordan 

Birju Shah is currently head of product for Uber Health & Communities, previously running the AI group. His past experiences working in life sciences led him to work with world-renowned scientists, regulators, biologists, chemists, doctors, and epidemiologists. Birju has leveraged advanced technology to provide tools and platforms to accelerate the innovation of diagnostics, therapeutics, and health services that can flatten the complex friction of the healthcare supply chain. The author can be contacted on LinkedIn.

Nick Jordan is the CEO of Narrative.io, an enterprise data streaming platform company. Nick founded Narrative in 2016 after spending nearly a decade in data-related product management roles including Yahoo!, Demdex (acquired by Adobe), and Tapad (acquired by Telenor). The author can be contacted on LinkedIn.

In December 2019, the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response told a House committee that “supply chain issues were among the most significant challenges to preparing for an influenza pandemic as well as other infectious diseases.”  A few months later, healthcare systems across the country and around the world are face-to-face with that harsh reality, as many of the largest healthcare suppliers are unable to fully meet the growing global demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers and ventilators and other supplies needed to care for patients.  

Supply chain professionals are collaborating and innovating with clinicians and communities in ways that are not only addressing the immediate crisis but also will likely reshape the future of the healthcare supply chain. As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, with some communities at or near the apex, the lessons learned to date can be shared in real-time with those still in its path.  

The work being done by Yale New Haven Health, as well as Mercy, BJC Healthcare, and SSM Health in the St. Louis area, serve as examples other health systems can follow as organizations work diligently to establish best practices to help serve their communities in the days and weeks ahead. 

Collaborate and Communicate with Clinicians

Supply chain professionals emphasize the importance of making sure healthcare workers feel safe in order to perform at the level demanded by the disease. This is challenging when the supplies they are accustomed to are no longer available and short supplies of alternatives warrant protocol changes, such as wearing the same mask for longer periods of time or even re-using equipment. Implementing these changes must be done in close collaboration with clinical leadership and constant communication with front line staff, so that they not only understand the changes but also the supporting evidence.  

Patrick Kenney, MD, medical director for supply chain at Yale New Haven Health, says it is especially disruptive for systems and clinicians who routinely seek to reduce variation to improve quality. When changes are a necessity, not an option, Dr. Kenney stresses “communication is essential, along with close interaction between supply chain, medical staff and nursing leadership.” Yale New Haven Health employs a multitude of communication channels, including videos, websites, and town halls, among others, to help clinicians with the transitions.  

Dr. Kenney says the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has been vital in providing as many alternative strategies as possible. He and his colleagues have conducted research on the reprocessing of N95 respirators and are implementing the practice to help minimize shortages of the higher filtration devices.  The research (currently undergoing peer review) is available on a pre-print service (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20041087v1) to accelerate knowledge sharing.  The 1,000+ COVID-19 related articles already on the site are a testament to the wealth of knowledge that is being generated by researchers around the world.  

Community Coordination

In his daily briefings, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has called on hospitals in the hard-hit New York City area and now the entire state to plan and function as if they were one system, to help ensure, among other things, that supplies are where they are needed most. Without such coordination, Governor Cuomo says individual hospitals and governments can create unnecessary competition leading to higher prices when they each seek to secure supplies from the same sources.   

In St. Louis, three major health systems, Mercy, BJC Healthcare, and SSM Health, are collaborating at the CEO level on testing, patient surge projections, and capacity planning.  BJC Chief Supply Chain Officer Tom Harvieux says it has been “a real community effort.”

Link the Patient and Supply Demand Planning

Yale New Haven Health has also created a dashboard of patients with confirmed or suspected cases to visualize where patients are coming from and to plan for upcoming demand. The System’s Corporate Supply Chain Lead Vin Matozzo says his team can predict with 70 percent accuracy the associated supply needs for those patients, helping ensure the product is where it is needed and to model the financial impact on a daily basis.  

Securing and Strengthening the Supply Chain

With the COVID-19 pandemic expected to last into the summer, and traditional suppliers likely unable to meet the full demand, the Association for Healthcare Resource and Materials Management (AHRMM), part of the American Hospital Association, has led an effort to identify and vet non-traditional suppliers to help broaden the supply base, while also minimizing the introduction of unscrupulous players. The vendors cleared through the process are listed on the AHRMM COVID-19 page.  Matozzo says the FBI and US FDA have also provided guidelines for how to recognize counterfeit products.  

Going forward, Yale New Haven Health’s Matozzo says it will be important for hospitals and healthcare systems to have better visibility into upstream supply risks, be it from natural disasters like Hurricane Maria, trade sanctions, labor strikes, or another pandemic that puts unprecedented demand on the global supply chain.  With a deeper understanding of how their supply partners are managing risk, providers can make sourcing and contracting decisions to minimize potential supply chain disruptions.  

Across the country, supply chain leaders credit relationships with trusted partners as foundational to meeting critical needs, beginning with the clinical, financial and operational leaders inside their own systems, and extending out into the community. This includes government, emergency responders, and public health agencies, as well as neighborhood resources. 

With many schools with medical training programs closing their on-campus operations, they can be a great source for supplies,  Instead of sourcing product from suppliers only, hospitals are calling on organizations that typically purchase those supplies, such as schools, construction companies, and hardware stores. In other cases, those with 3D printing capabilities are downloading open-source designs for products ranging from face shields to respirator parts and setting up production lines in their living rooms. As one hospital supply chain leader put it: “In healthcare, we get used to things working with certain players; in times of crisis your next-door neighbor might be your best supply chain.”

About Karen Conway

Karen Conway is Vice President, Healthcare Value with Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX). GHX is a healthcare business and data automation company that works with 4,100+ North American healthcare providers, and 600 manufacturers and distributors in North America to automate their business processes.

What You Should Know:

– IBM has launched Rapid Supplier Connect, a blockchain-based solution to help battle medical supply chain shortages due to COVID-19. 
 
– The network will help government agencies and healthcare organizations identify new, non-traditional suppliers who have pivoted to address the shortage of equipment, devices, and supplies needed for COVID-19 relief efforts. 

– Rapid Supplier Connect is available at no cost until August 31, 2020, to qualified buyers and suppliers in the US and Canada. 

As part of IBM’s approach to combating COVID-19 with technology solutions that enable more trustworthy information, accelerated discovery, resiliency, and adaptation, the company today announced IBM Rapid Supplier Connect, a blockchain-based network designed to help government agencies and healthcare organizations identify new, non-traditional suppliers who have pivoted to address the shortage of equipment, devices, and supplies needed for COVID-19 relief efforts.

Availability/Cost

Rapid Supplier Connect is available at no cost until August 31, 2020, to qualified buyers and suppliers in the United States and Canada. Suppliers and buyers currently joining the network include hospitals and other organizations such as Northwell Health, New York’s largest healthcare provider, and The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation, which is onboarding more than 200 American suppliers from its 3,000 global community members. 

IBM Rapid Supplier Connect Features & Benefits

With healthcare workers and other first responders feeling the impact of supply chains disrupted by unprecedented challenges, many large and small businesses from outside the traditional healthcare procurement system are reconfiguring to mass-produce masks, gowns, and other essential supplies. In order to begin purchasing from them at scale, buyers—including hospitals, state procurement divisions, pharmacies, and others — need help identifying these new suppliers, efficiently vetting and on-boarding them, and understanding their real-time inventory availability. The network also helps identify existing supplies and excess inventory going unused, allowing hospitals to make it available to others and redirect supplies where they are needed most.

Buyers who access the network can benefit from a broader range of suppliers outside of their traditional supply chain, a streamlined supplier onboarding process, validation checks, and inventory information in near-real-time. Suppliers benefit from a portable online identity, access to user feedback, and the ability to post and manage inventory availability. Real-time insight into a volatile and uncertain supply chain is never simple, and with the challenges of the current global situation, IBM harnessed the Trust Your Supplier blockchain-based identity platform built by Chainyard for qualification and identification, in conjunction with its existing Sterling Supply Chain Suite and highly scalable Inventory Visibility microservice to deliver this increased visibility. 

Rapid Supplier Connect complements existing supply chain networks and their payment systems, however, buyers also have the option to use the services of a third-party paymaster for a fee, CDAX, which will secure funds on behalf of buyers in a custody and settlement account, holding goods ordered contractually from the supplier under a consignment arrangement until the buyer verifies acceptance of the order and releases funds to the seller. Project N95, which is serving as a clearinghouse for information on COVID-related suppliers will also help with supplier vetting. Dun & Bradstreet is contributing its identity resolution, firmographic data, and supplier risk and viability scores, and KYC SiteScan will provide “Know Your Business” due diligence report access. 

How to Join The Network

Joining the network is expected to take buyers and suppliers approximately 30 minutes, with industry and technical support provided by IBM’s operational support center to assist with onboarding and getting value from the network. 

What You Should Know:

– Scammers may be trafficking counterfeit or faulty protective equipment (PPE) during COVID-19 in what is now known as the “grey market.”

– Premier outlines five common types of COVID-19 grey market scams for hospitals to avoid and key best practices to avoid them as hospital brace for the surge in COVID-19 patients.

Healthcare providers are working around the clock to safely care for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the last thing they need to worry about is whether their protective equipment (PPE) are reliable, safe and legitimate. Premier, a healthcare improvement company finds that scammers are now preying on hospitals by peddling counterfeit or faulty PPE including surgical masks, face shields, surgical gloves and gowns, isolation gowns, caps and shoe covers.

Defining Grey Market

Premier defines gray market as a supply channel that is unofficial, unauthorized or unintended by the original manufacturer. In markets where the products are scarce or in short supply, gray markets may crop up to sell the item at any price the market will bear. In the case of COVID-19, where more than 2,000 unique stock-keeping units (SKUs) are on allocation from distributors, gray market vendors are attempting to capitalize on providers’ needs, offering difficult to obtain supplies at a 50X markup.

According to a survey of our members, 60 percent of facilities have received at least one of these offers, and Premier itself has received hundreds of these solicitations. Regardless of the form, these scams typically end with providers losing time, money and/or resources. Others find themselves the recipients of substandard or unsafe products – if they receive anything at all.

5 Common Types of COVID-19 Grey Market Scams

Premier outline the following five common types of COVID-19 grey market scams for hospitals:

1. Pay ahead. A broker requests – and receives – a deposit from hospitals for PPE such as medical-grade N95 masks. After wiring the funds, the broker vanishes, ceasing all communications.

2. One certificate, infinite masks. Multiple brokers have suggested they have millions (upon millions) of masks and all point to the same fraudulent certification documents.

3. Or just infinite masks. One broker reached out to Premier with the promise of a number of masks so high, that when we called the manufacturer to check the claim, we were told that it would have taken years of dedicated, international production without a single sale to reach that kind of stockpile.

4. Product exists, but it doesn’t work. We’ve had members pay for and receive products, as advertised, only to learn that the entire batch has to be discarded after they fail basic quality and authenticity tests.

5. Welcome to their humble abode. Solicitations sometimes come with an address. A quick Google Earth check will show that more often than not, the address isn’t for a factory, a warehouse or even an office. It’s usually home. That should serve as a warning that the product being offered is illegitimate if it even exists.

4 Best Practices for Hospitals to Avoid COVID-19 Grey Market Scams

In order for hospitals to avoid these common COVID-19 grey market scams, Premier recommends the following best practices:

1. Demand access to the physical item before paying for it. Not only does this require the seller to send proof that the item exists, it also allows an opportunity to vet the product through a trusted partner like Premier or the manufacturer to confirm its legitimacy.

2. Do homework on parties involved. Google their addresses, check with peers or Premier on the legitimacy of goods they’ve delivered and ask questions. Err on the side of caution and be skeptical; if the seller has trouble answering questions or seems cagey in responses, walk away immediately.

3. Thoroughly vet vendors, including checking registrations with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Be wary of links embedded in email offers, which could be a phishing cyber scam.

4. Take monetary precautions. For those that choose to buy, at a minimum provide funds via an escrow account to avoid theft.

Chances are good the face mask you’re wearing or have on hand (just in case) was made outside the United States, maybe in China.

In calmer times, that wouldn’t matter much. But when Chinese officials are trying to stem a global pandemic that started in a Chinese city, how likely is it that the country will continue to export face masks at the same rate?

This isn’t a hypothetical. With the spread of COVID-19, aka, coronavirus, we know the answer is not very, and that it impacts a great deal more than face masks.

This moment might be one of opportunity for Mike Bowen, executive vice president for one of the few companies that manufactures masks in the U.S., were it not for the overwhelming numbers—for the chasm that exists between supply and demand.

“I’ve got requests for maybe a billion and a half masks, if you add it up,” Bowen says, adding that since January he is averaging around 100 calls and emails a day. “Normally, I don’t get any.”

Of course, the challenge illustrated by Bowen’s predicament is far more expansive than the inability of one Texas-based manufacturer to keep up with a ridiculous, panic-driven spike in demand.

“Without secure supply chains, the risk to health care workers around the world is real,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization. “Industry and governments must act quickly to boost supply, ease export restrictions and put measures in place to stop speculation and hoarding.”

And in the meantime, what can an individual hospital or health system do to try and ensure adequate supplies?

Focus on things at home. Keep it local. At a minimum, implement real-time supply chain management systems that provide timely, accurate reports so you know what you have and need.

How can a robust supply-chain management system help you in times like these?

First, by managing items across supply chain methodologies. Certainly, your hospital orders from different suppliers, and chances are those suppliers don’t all use the same methodology. With cross-stock methodology capabilities, it won’t matter whether suppliers use KANBAN, EOQ/ROP, PAR, MIN/MAX or Suppress Pick.

When the system can search without concern for methodology compatibility, your hospital can have more faith in the accuracy of current inventory, will save time previously spent contacting individual suppliers, and can more rapidly resupply as needed by quickly determining who has what and where. Need to replenish hand sanitizer and cotton swabs? Initiate one search that pulls in all existing suppliers and tells you who has what you need before placing an order.

Second, by tracking the supply of an item for both primary and secondary suppliers. As COVID-19 demonstrates, this ability to manage backorder situations is always useful and sometimes crucial. A useful, vibrant system will use a barcode to add an item to a primary provider pick list AND report on the same item to a secondary provider in the event the primary has none in stock. The need for guess work and manually retracing steps when the primary provider does not have the necessary stock is eliminated.

Finally, by comprehensively managing all items not controlled by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Controlled substances that fall under DEA jurisdiction are a complicating factor, but the system you use should monitor everything but controlled substances. Is your hospital having to manually track and order some essential items? Time to look for a new system.

Beyond these common-sense steps enabled by a functional supply-chain solution, hospital administrators may want to start looking for alternative suppliers. The disturbing truth is that the United States has become heavily reliant on China for certain products that slow to a trickle in situations like the one COVID-19 is creating.

“This is an opportunity for companies to look for different ways to do the supply chain,” said Stephanie Kennan of McGuireWoods Consulting. “I think it’s an issue that over the long term we need to grapple with because we can’t even manufacture a lot of the drugs inside the United States.”

And where China is the source of many drug-related components, India produces many of the finished drugs imported to the United States. With COVID-19, the Indian government has instructed manufacturers to get permission before exporting 26 different drugs, about two-thirds of which are antibiotics.

So, will COVID-19 be the catalyst for a whole new era of manufacturing essential products inside the United States? Perhaps it will be, and perhaps it should be. And perhaps your hospital can find a way to contribute to or benefit from such efforts.

In the meantime, however, the best thing you can do for your organization and patients is to stock up on necessary items as efficiently and rapidly as possible. With any luck, COVID-19 will be a tremendously exaggerated threat, but it will most certainly be followed eventually by a bug that is not. The key element is our preparation for threats generally, not the lethality of this threat in particular.

Irv Lichtenwald is president and CEO of  Medsphere Systems Corporation, the solution provider for the CareVue electronic health record.

What You Should Know:

– Jump Technologies offers new supply chain solution free of charge to help hospitals manage utilization of critical supplies and avoid stockouts during high volume COVID-19 response.

– From a single screen, hospitals can easily see where existing supplies are located (in hospital storage or in a warehouse); track consumption by department, clinic, or user; and forecast potential stockouts.

The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has placed unique pressures on the hospital supply chain, forcing facilities to maintain a detailed picture of what inventory they have available, where it’s located, and how fast it’s moving – all of which is essential to treating the high volume of patients with COVID-19 symptoms.

To help hospitals achieve this critical balance and to ensure health care providers have the proper equipment to safely perform their jobs, Jump Technologies announced it will offer its new Allocated Inventory Solution at no cost to help hospitals take control of their inventory during this global health crisis. 

The Jump Technologies’ solution runs in the cloud and does not require any special hardware, so it can be set up quickly and with no disruption to hospital operations. Supply chain staff can be up to speed on using the system with just a 30-minute training session.

Key elements of the Allocated Inventory Solution include:

– From a single screen, hospitals can easily see where existing supplies are located (in hospital storage or in a warehouse); track consumption by department, clinic, or user; and forecast potential stockouts. 

– The new solution does not require integration into the hospital ERP or EMR and does not require access to sensitive data such as patient information or pricing. 

– Because it is a cloud-based solution, it is safe, simple, and secure for hospitals.

“At times like this, it’s vitally important for hospitals to have a clear picture of allocated and sequestered inventory so they understand the resources available to them and whether they are at risk of running out of essential supplies before their next shipment,” said John Freund, CEO of Jump Technologies. “Because we understand the challenges this pandemic creates for hospital supply chain, we are waiving our fees to ensure as many hospitals as possible have access to tools that will give them insight into high-demand supplies that are essential to treating patients.”