Beyond the Pandemic: Mitigating Supply Chain Risk and Disruption (AHA Transformation Talks)

COVID-19 has exposed the fragile nature of the health care supply chain.

Now, many health care leaders are looking beyond the pandemic to address long-standing vulnerabilities in the supply chain to ensure that adequate supplies exist at the local, regional and national levels during times of crisis. This has led to the following market realities:

• It is critical to forge new relationships with onshore and near-shore suppliers or invest in dependable companies that can fill their needs during peak surges.
• There will be a greater need for bidirectional transparency and greater sharing of utilization data among health care providers, manufacturers and distributors.
• Just-in-time and Lean inventory-management strategies need to be reevaluated across the supply chain continuum to better document, monitor and predict product needs in daily operations as well as when product demand surges.

Michael Schiller, AHRMM's Senior Director of Supply Chain, and Richard Bagley, Senior Vice President, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Penn State Health, led the discussion on lessons learned and ways we should rethink supply chain strategies for the future.

Visit AHA Trasformation Talks webpage for Episode Abstract and Key Takeaways