Re-thinking Healthcare Supply Chains After COVID
“One Word – Are you Listening? – Plastics”: A Critical Bottleneck to COVID Testing
This famous line from “The Graduate” describes one of the major bottlenecks that exists in the PCR testing supply chain, as we learned in our research interviews this week. I am working with a team of faculty and students on […]
Why the U.S. Still Has a Severe Shortage of Medical Supplies
Unlike toilet paper and hand sanitizer, the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) and critical health care supplies in the United States still hasn’t stabilized, and health care professionals across the country continue to face higher risk working conditions as […]
Just How Dire is the COVID Healthcare Global Supply Chain Response? (A Case Study)
One would surmise from some of the political proclamations made in the last few days that the COVID crisis is behind us and that everything is back to normal. Some of my recent research has involved interviews with healthcare physicians, […]
The Next Supply Chain Capacity Expansion Will Be…
In the current environment, the big push for production and the biggest shortfalls in capacity is for test kits. Recent reports identify that the level of testing is far below what they need to be, and despite their best efforts, […]
Foraging for Healthcare Supplies in a Western Economy
Yesterday I spoke with a procurement executive at a major hospital in the Northeast. This is someone that I know and respect, and who is considered a highly proactive and informed individual. He is deploying advanced procurement technology in his […]
The PPE Shortage Nightmare is Far From Over — It’s About to Get Worse
Given the lack of discussion in the media on supply chain shortages in healthcare, one would think that this crisis has been averted, and that shortages of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), medicines, and hospital supplies is now a history lesson. […]
Government’s Big Move to Electronic Marketplaces
I was recently involved in a research discussion with Chris Yukins of George WAshington University’s Law School’s Government Procurement Program, and Thomas Kull from Arizona State University, exploring the impact of the rise of electronic marketplaces in government procurement. In […]
The Strategic National Stockpile that Failed Us
The COVID-19 crisis arrived in the United States in February and was largely dismissed as a non-threatening issue. In particular, the CDC was convinced that it had contained the virus and retained control of all diagnostic testing, which later produced […]
Healthcare Strategic Stockpile Management Remains a Big Challenge
Beginning in 2015 the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine led a standing committee to inform Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) decision-making. This committee included “…state and local public health officials, representatives of medical manufacturing and distribution companies, logistics managers, […]
We Need Supply Chain Immunity, not Resiliency: A Position Paper
In today’s post I am sharing insights from a position paper that my colleague Dan Finkenstadt, PhD, myself, and other academic and government officers are working on. The paper is an attempt to create some logic in the fact of […]