Alexandria, VA, July 6, 2021 - During HIDA’s Supply Chain Visibility conference, experts highlighted a recurring theme that has surfaced throughout the pandemic – the value of trusted, highly-transparent relationships between healthcare trading partners.
“In order to have a resilient supply chain you have to have visibility,” said Concordance Healthcare CEO Lisa Hohman during the opening session of the third annual event. “Working together as an industry is one of the most important things we can do to ensure we have a better response in the future.”
The event brought together more than 130 leaders from 70 organizations, including health systems, GPOs, distributors, and government partners. Attendees participated in interactive working roundtables to share their pandemic lessons and develop recommendations for improvements.
5 key takeaways:
- COVID-19 elevated the need to identify where products and raw materials are sourced, manufactured, and housed.
- Government and commercial leaders agree that the U.S. needs greater redundancies in manufacturing, including more nearshore and domestic production.
- During the pandemic, the commercial sector and federal government collaborated to share key supply and demand data, providing a model ripe for expansion.
- Organizations across the supply chain are increasing inventory levels to create more buffer in the supply chain. In many cases, distributors are collaborating with providers to provide warehouse space and inventory management services for organizations that want to expand their reserves.
- Allocations are an important tool for conserving products during a shortage, but more standard processes and definitions are needed.
The Supply Chain Visibility Conference resulted from the work of HIDA’s Healthcare Supply Chain Collaborative. The Collaborative addresses end-to-end supply chain challenges including supply chain resilience, pricing accuracy, and product information management, and works to advance best practices for processes and data.
About HIDA
The Health Industry Distributors Association (HIDA) represents the country’s medical product distributors – the nation’s essential link between manufacturers and patient caregivers. HIDA members offer critical services increasing the efficiency of U.S. healthcare providers, including hospitals, nursing homes, laboratories, home care, and physician practices. For more information, visit HIDA.org.