Interdepartmental collaboration within a hospital or health system is essential to ensuring appropriate infection prevention materials are available in the supply chain, writes Sarah Herrmann, Vizient Director, Program Services in a recent blog.
Herrmann recounts that in the early days of the pandemic, Vizient entered a partnership with a supplier to ramp up nearshore manufacturing of isolation gowns — “in just two months, weekly production ballooned from 50,000 to 500,000, ultimately landing nearly 22 million additional gowns in the hands of acute and nonacute healthcare providers across the U.S.,” she wrote.
The manufacturer also collaborated with providers’ infection prevention and purchasing teams to refine design details in an effort to better meet clinical needs, including adjusting sleeve lengths and cuffs, as well as seaming for the gowns’ “tear-down” feature to eliminate unnecessary contact with the gowns.
Herrmann wrote that there were plenty of key takeaways from this collaboration. “For instance, stakeholders on both sides operated quickly to get feedback from infection prevention teams, funneled those through the supply chain, adjusted production at the factory to implement the requested refinements and then released samples for review. Once those changes were validated, the updates were put into production, with improvements benefiting everyone across the market.”
In addition to rapid deployment of product and expeditious feedback connecting supply chain and infection prevention teams, Hermann listed several other successful strategies. Read more here