Supporting the health care supply chain

For anyone in the medical field today, it can seem like we are working through a time with more challenges than solutions. Across the country, local responses to COVID-19 have scaled up, putting many states on lockdown and trying to rapidly expand testing and bolster our medical capacity with new treatment facilities. Yet every day, more patients test positive, leaving uncertain what the next day will hold.

The coronavirus has raised major concerns about how the health care supply chain will be able to respond to rapid changes in our community’s level of need for medications and health care devices to both respond to the crisis and maintain preexisting patient needs.

Luckily, the healthcare industry is not waiting on the sidelines to see how this plays out. From researchers and manufacturers working on the next wave of treatments and developing a future vaccine to the frontline medical workers who are putting their own health on the line to protect patients, every aspect of the medical system is grappling with difficult questions and making swift procedural changes to improve our response to the virus.

A concern facing all of us has been how best to utilize the often-limited resources our practices have at hand. Thankfully, the entire healthcare supply chain – manufacturers, pharmacists, and our wholesale distributor partners - are working tirelessly to try and sustain our inventory of available medicines and supplies.

Certainly the COVID-19-induced spike in demand for medications and medical products has been challenging. Working as the logistics experts between hospitals and pharmacies, biopharmaceutical companies, and the government, distributors are working with pharmacists and manufacturers to maintain an open stream of communication that is supporting the nation’s coronavirus response in a few key ways. Distributors can access inventories, locate additional pharmaceutical suppliers when available, and distribute the resources they have warehoused to quickly reach pharmacies and providers.

Additionally, the interplay between distributors and the government agencies managing our response to the pandemic allows a tailored response to the virus by state. Here in California, for example, the state Board of Pharmacy has permitted the development of mobile clinics and pharmacies as well as mobile prescription processing. These changes can be a powerful tool to help reduce the burden on strained pharmacies and ensure that patients across the state continue to receive the care and access they need, but they also come with increased supply-side challenges that the wholesale distributors are supporting.

This relationship between manufacturers, pharmacists and distributors is critical to maintaining a smooth working supply chain that will keep medications and healthcare products accessible during these challenging times and ensuring resources can reach the places where they’re needed most.