CHARLOTTE, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Premier Inc. (NASDAQ: PINC), a leading healthcare improvement company, is coordinating across the industry to help solve the supply chain challenges presented by COVID-19. Success will rely on strong partnership between providers, group purchasing organizations, distributors, manufacturers and the government.

“The challenges we face today are unlike anything we’ve confronted before as an industry,” says Premier CEO Susan D. DeVore. “To protect our healthcare workers and advance patient care, we need to move beyond allotting product based on historical volumes and ordering patterns – we need supplies to go where the cases are. And that requires strong coordination for supplies and commitments from domestic manufacturers.”

During COVID-19, Premier is helping align stakeholders around data-driven strategies to manage shortages and enable improvements in the supply chain.

Strategy #1: Accelerate access to products in shortage by creating an expedited contracting process within our group purchasing organization (GPO).

Premier’s GPO established an expedited sourcing process to add additional suppliers to product categories experiencing shortages. The accelerated sourcing process incorporates products in categories that are under protective allocation, expected to move into allocation or currently in shortage, with the goal of rapidly increasing access to needed supplies.
Next Steps: Members will continue to evaluate and award contracts based on categories that will be most beneficial during the COVID-19 response to ensure increased access to shortage products at fair prices.

Strategy #2: Ramp up manufacturing.

As Asia and Europe expand their export bans, the U.S. needs to jumpstart American manufacturing. Premier is identifying and reaching out to domestic manufacturers to expand production capacity, particularly for ventilators, critical drugs and other personal protective equipment (PPE) products.
Recognizing the need to balance America’s reliance on international manufacturing and sourcing, Premier’s direct sourcing subsidiary, S2S Global, has been increasing the production of masks, gloves and other PPE from multiple countries and regions to lower risk and increase redundancy. Recently, S2S executed forward buys for certain categories of PPE to make supplies available to providers.
Next Steps: The industry is in talks with multiple U.S. manufacturers in ancillary lines of business about converting production from consumer products to healthcare products. More manufacturers are likely to join the efforts if they have assurance that they won’t be left with losses associated with excess inventory if buying shifts back to traditional suppliers once the COVID-19 crisis abates. The government, by providing pricing assurance, can incent manufacturers to increase production and remove impediments to international trade.

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