Executive Insights

In my conversations with healthcare supply chain leaders over the last few months, one of the most often mentioned challenges was related to product shortages and resiliency. While tariffs also seem to be at the forefront of many supply chain leaders’ minds, product shortages and the implications of these shortages pose a significant concern to supply chain leaders at IDNs across the country.

The most recent widespread shortage has been for IV solutions due to manufacturing disruptions from Hurricane Helene. The IDN Summit Team reached out in December with a provider survey to better understand the current status of that particular product shortage. Thank you to those who shared feedback in response to the survey.

We had 76 provider respondents in late December/early January from different sizes of hospitals and health systems across the country. Several responses were interesting. Here are some highlights from respondents about their recent experiences with the IV solutions shortages:

More than 97% were impacted
65% are still being severely or moderately affected
61% experienced increased costs due to alternative sourcing
1/3 experienced delays or cancellation of surgeries
7% of respondents experienced an impact of at least 1 in 5 surgeries
Although the impact is significantly better today, 37% are still having to delay some elective surgeries
64% experienced patient care challenges requiring clinical alternatives
91% had to adjust their clinical protocols to reduce IV fluid usage
79% had to seek alternative supplies or products
77% increased use of oral hydration or other substitutes
41% delayed or rescheduled non-urgent procedures
60% think that IV fluid supply will return to pre-shortage inventory levels by March 31, 2025

Additional strategies implemented to manage the shortage:

Alerts in EPIC to continuously remind physicians of global shortage
Established monitoring dashboards for affected products
Extended commitment with primary supplier to avoid disruption
Compounded their own solutions
Prepared to split 1000 ml bags to 500 ml and built alternatives in EPIC
Pharmacy drew up syringes of lactated ringers for use in some surgeries
Implemented supply continuity strategies and self-distribution to keep 30 days inventory on hand
IDN used different vendors in different regions and moved product around to meet demand

In addition to the survey feedback, here are other comments shared with me during recent conversations with supply chain leaders.

Use of Supply Networks to create visibility with trading partners looking at inventory on both sides
Advocating with Strategic National Stockpile to monitor and plan for high-risk shortages
Joining the Healthcare Industry Resilience Collaborative (HIRC) to drive healthcare supply chain resiliency standards and best practices as well as transparency in healthcare supply chains
Dedicating resources to resiliency positions
Implementing more technology, AI for demand planning and resource monitoring

IDNs have had incredible learnings in the past where they have rapidly innovated to solve a problem. So often though, they resort back to their previous ways. Just like with COVID-19 and the pandemic or with IV Solutions shortages, supply chain leaders can learn so much from challenging experiences. But now, it is up to us to take these learnings and hardwire them into long lasting solutions.

Please reach out to me if you have suggestions for topics to cover in the Executive Insights newsletter or at the Spring and Fall IDN Summits and the ACE Summit.