Top 10 healthcare supply chain red alerts.
By R. Dana Barlow
August 2024 – The Journal of Healthcare Contracting
The narrative literary format known as a “listicle,” if penned right, can be as fun to read as it is to write.
Think of the conceptual headline, “Top 10 Supply Chain Reactions Immediately After the Telephone Rings During a Crisis,” and you get the idea. Anyone remember David Letterman’s “Top 10” lists when he hosted “Late Night with David Letterman,” following “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” on NBC?
For many years, ECRI has attracted plenty of eyeballs when it releases its annual listicles, such as the “Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns” and “Top 10 Health Technology Hazards.” Even Battelle Memorial Institute contributed to intellectual curiosity and tickled interests with its annual lists of the “Top 10 Product Innovations” and “Top 10 Technologies That [insert category here].”
As a respectful homage to both industry staples, here are the “Top 10 Healthcare Supply Chain Red Alerts or Warning Signs.”
10. Healthcare Supply Chain is not invited to participate in the pre- and initial planning stages for construction/renovation projects. You know, those doorways aren’t going to magically widen to accommodate that new CT scanner being delivered two months from now.
9. Healthcare Supply Chain is not able to use its influence to convince suppliers to standardize and independently validate cleaning/disinfection/sterilization instructions-for-use (IFUs) on devices and products, which contributes to improper cleaning/disinfection/sterilization of products used in surgical suites and on patient floors. Instead, the various facilities within the integrated delivery network (IDN) will do things their own way and handle treatment of patient infections on the back end. Wait, those processes aren’t standardized either? Next!
8. Improper cleaning/disinfection/sterilization of healthcare facility environments lingers. Just like patients don’t want to be discharged with infectious microbes as fabulous parting gifts, contractors, visitors and workers also don’t want to wear or inhale bacterial and viral samples as consolation prizes.
7. Healthcare Supply Chain fails to manage and control supplier/vendor relations via sovereignty borders and accountability scorecards. Suppliers and vendors serve as third-party product and service providers. They should not function as “foster management” for delegated (off-loaded?) duties and responsibilities. Nor should they always assume the blame for missed expectations and unfulfilled demands. The C-suite should not sign with a GPO to compensate for a second- or third-rate supply chain department, but to enhance the skilled and talented professionals within their supply chain operations. People say automation and robotics are intended to assume manual and repetitive activities to redirect humans to concentrate on strategic and tactical thinking. The same can be said of distributors, GPOs, consultants and others in the supply channel between buyer/end user and manufacturer/producer.
6. Cybersecurity is not just IT’s problem. Yes, IT must establish effective firewalls and defensive and protective weaponry to ward off hackers and intruders. But supply chain must protect the accuracy, integrity and sanctity of item master data and its relationship to CDM data as well as its own electronic transactional information.
5. Manage labor by way of leadership training and succession planning. If you build it, success will come; if you lack it, you will be done.
4. Universal supply data standards remain a work in progress. Feeling the threat of perceived draconian government encroachment and interference, the pharmaceutical industry back in the 1970s took command of data standards and established the NDC, thereby warding off federal oversight. Sure, pharmaceutical products may encompass a smaller variety than the plethora of medical/surgical and other supplies, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to debate and delay the adoption and implementation of supply data standards for the industry segment. The threat of federal oversight should be just as acute and intense to drive – and not stall – action. Since the “Common Category Database” in the late 1980s, we’re still waiting for many to embrace the idea and join the movement.
3. The lack of clinical integration disintermediates Supply Chain. When supply chain fails to establish, develop and grow professional relationships with clinicians – including doctors, nurses, physicians and surgeons as well as diagnostic imaging and laboratory specialists – they effectively are flushing business acumen, consulting relationships, facilitation, goodwill, money and value analysis down the drain.
2. Supply Chain seems to lack the recognition and respect for its authority, importance and influence within an organization, the industry and economy. Contrary to popular opinion, supply chain doesn’t need a seat in the C-suite, nor does it need an invitation. Outside of the mission-driven healthcare provider industry segment, supply chain is highly regarded and respected in the profit/revenue-driven healthcare supplier industry segment as well as in the non-healthcare industries, including hospitality, manufacturing and retail. Over there, supply chain’s efforts drive success in terms of production and sales. Here, supply chain’s efforts drive service in terms of clinicians delivering patient care. The former focuses on the balance sheet; the latter concentrates on how quickly a death certificate may be issued. Think about it.
1. Based on the previous item, some Supply Chain executives, leaders and professionals may lack faith and trust in their own personal and professional abilities, skills and talents. Don’t be seduced by “imposter syndrome.” You wouldn’t be where you are – or even last too long – if you weren’t good at what you do. From this No. 1 perch at the top stems everything below – or in this case, what preceded. Supply chain is not – nor should be – an afterthought or appendage of the C-suite or healthcare enterprise to be blamed when something goes wrong or ridiculed when something doesn’t go right. Supply chain touches everyone and everything, or as Banner Health’s Senior Vice President and Chief Supply Chain Officer Doug Bowen likes to say, “the Supply Chain is everyone’s business.”
R. Dana Barlow serves as a senior writer and columnist for The Journal of Healthcare Contracting. Barlow has nearly four decades of journalistic experience and has covered healthcare supply chain issues for more than 30 years. He can be reached at rickdanabarlow@wingfootmedia.biz.