Healthcare Supply Chain Stakeholders Develop Allocation Best Practices

Alexandria, VA – October 5, 2021 - This week, HIDA’s Healthcare Supply Chain Collaborative announced new best practice recommendations for medical supply allocations aimed at improving alignment and communication between trading partners.

The early pandemic environment demonstrated the need for standard practices in allocation. In response, HIDA convened experts from distributors, manufacturers, care providers, and group purchasing organizations to develop specific recommendations.

“Allocation is an important tool for conserving supplies during a shortage, but each organization seemed to have a different approach,” said HIDA Senior Vice President Elizabeth Hilla.  “We believe these recommendations are an important step in aligning the processes.”

The Collaborative’s mission is transforming the healthcare supply chain through best practices for processes and data. This new resource addresses transparency, information sharing, calculations and processes, and specific challenges. Among the recommendations:

• Manufacturers should set allocations to their distributors, and allow their distributors to set customer allocations, to prevent customers from receiving conflicting information.
• The manufacturer should announce the allocation to distributor partners first, allowing them 48 hours to prepare before additional announcements.
• The baseline period for allocation calculations should be the same quarter from the prior year.
• When communicating allocation amounts to trading partners, the supplier should provide units not just percentages.

“Allocations: Best Practices For Conserving Medical Supplies During Shortages” is available to download at no charge. Access it here .