December 1, 2020 – While major metropolitan hospitals have largely stabilized their supply chains for personal protective equipment (PPE), facilities and communities that serve some of the most vulnerable populations are still struggling to get what they need, according to STAT.
An analysis by nonprofit group, Get Us PPE, found that while the PPE requests it received were almost evenly split between hospitals and nonhospital settings in April, in October, over 90% of requests were from facilities such as homeless shelters, natural disaster relief groups, and nurses’ offices in schools. Smaller hospitals are also struggling.
“Even if there’s still inadequate supply, major hospital systems have been able to access that inadequate supply because they have the financial means,” said Megan Ranney, a co-founder of Get Us PPE, which organizes and distributes PPE donations to both hospital and nonhospital facilities across the country. “The clinics, safety net hospitals, the critical access rural hospitals, the smaller nursing homes are absolutely still lacking PPE.”
The problem is not just a financial one, reports STAT, it is an issue of supply. China — the source of over 40% of the world’s PPE imports — shut down its factories in the wake of the first coronavirus surge. U.S. hospitals weren’t nimble enough to find new suppliers.
Hospitals have turned to local communities for help, with major metropolitan hospital systems receiving brand-name N95 respirators left over from home improvement DIY projects, boxes of gloves and masks from dentist’s offices — even supplies pulled straight from the cabinets of then-shuttered public school nurse’s offices.
Emory Healthcare in Atlanta opened a PPE donation site in late March, and received 40,000 N95 respirators and more than 100,000 surgical and homemade cloth masks…