A multi-billion dollar supply chain management programme for US veteran healthcare has come under pressure to end, following claims it is out of date and poorly run.
Led by BD, the Healthcare Distribution Alliance (HDA), AdvaMed, Regeneron, the pharmaceutical industry, and frontline workers, the awardees were selected for driving creative solutions to a myriad of obstacles presented by COVID-19, hurricanes, and wildfires over the past year.
The growth of the global healthcare supply chain management market is driven by factors such as improved supply chain network of manufacturers, growing pressure in the healthcare industry for cost reduction, rise in the adoption of advanced systems such as GS1 System of Standards, and the Food and Drug Administration's unique device identifier (UDI) system.
Two days before Christmas, a cargo ship left Mumbai with a mask-making machine bound for Illinois-based OSF HealthCare, which will use the equipment to make its own N95 masks.
The past almost two years have left the healthcare industry vulnerable to risks that would otherwise not exist in a pre-pandemic environment. But without the necessary accountability tools for upholding systems that prevent drug diversion in the workplace, a different — and often overlooked — threat is looming. And, with abuse of controlled substances already an issue among healthcare workers, the pressures and trauma the Covid-19 pandemic added to the lives of many clinicians should not go unnoticed, for doing so could result in a decline in patient safety.
For the past 2 years, supply-chain issues have dominated the news coverage, and we appear to be far from a satisfactory resolution. As a result, supply-chain management has become a focus of hospital and other business administrators, as current shortages of drugs and things like crutches replace the dearth of PPE that occurred at the beginning of the pandemic.