The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated two important facts: First, the hospital supply chain is vital to the health and safety of patients and hospital staff. Second, healthcare supply chain, as a whole,  is broken in a number of important ways. 

Supply chain’s shortcomings were evident as the pandemic hit American cities. Hospitals struggled to locate adequate supplies of PPE and other essential items, causing unnecessary sickness and death. Entire economies shut down to give facilities time to prepare, costing taxpayers trillions and causing unemployment to spike. 

Responding to these challenges will require hospitals to learn some important lessons from their experience during this pandemic, and to prepare before a second wave of the virus hits. To succeed, we must reimagine healthcare supply chain, from how hospitals use data to how they work with clinicians and even other hospitals. 

Jump Technologies’ CEO John Freund highlights the critical lessons hospitals must learn to prevent this from happening again in a new byline for SupplyChainBrain. Read the byline to learn why hospitals need to:

• Strive for visibility in all areas of supply chain;
• Rely on data, not opinions when making purchasing decisions;
• Forget physical counts and make decisions based on data about velocity;
• Collaborate with clinicians, other facilities, and the government; and
• Involve clinicians in supply chain decisions so they can adjust their actions based on real-world information.

The ability of the healthcare industry to navigate future emergencies will depend on how we respond to the lessons learned during this pandemic. The safety of patients, staff, and even the economy will depend on it.

Read the full byline at SupplyChainBrain.