COVER STORY


Educate yourself, keep your ear to the ground and stay prepared


for change BY ROBERT KURTZ


A


dd the ASC supply chain to the list of the pieces of the US healthcare system that will be dealing with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic for years to come. “This year [2020] has been like


no other,” says Jeri Lynn Bartha, who has 34 years of supply chain experi- ence and serves as a certified endos- copy technician for Endoscopy Cen- ter of Niagara in Niagara Falls, New York, where she oversees the ASC's supply chain. “It has been very chal- lenging, with constant worrying about who has supplies, will they be affordable and whether you will even


10 ASC FOCUS MARCH 2021 | ascfocus.org


get your supplies when you order them. It is going to be a long time before we are able to get things back to some semblance of normalcy.” As ASCs work to define and refine their supply chain strategies, they must take into consideration the devel- opments from 2020 that have rap- idly reshaped materials management, says Todd Eich, an independent sup- ply chain consultant in Dallas, Texas. “We have experienced a lot of change in a short amount of time. What ASCs were largely doing in 2019 concerning their supply chain is not what they will be doing in 2021.”


Significant Changes and Disrupters To Janet Carlson, RN, chief executive officer of The Surgery Center at Mid- lands Orthopaedics & Neurosurgery in Columbia, South Carolina, one of the most significant supply chain develop- ments concerns shortages. Even before the pandemic, the ASC was experi- encing a shortage of surgical supplies, including caps, gloves and shoe covers, she says. Finding gowns became more challenging following a major recall early in the year. “Then came COVID- 19 and a mad dash for personal protec- tive equipment (PPE), including N95 masks,” she says. “ASCs had never needed N95s and then we suddenly needed them at the same time as the rest of the world.”


As demand for PPE, cleaning sup- plies and other safety-related items spiked, new product sellers appeared essentially overnight. This caused a slew of additional challenges, Eich says. “You had opportunists entering the market trying to make money with-


EXPECT CONTINUED SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTION


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