December 30, 2024- In his work as Chief Consulting Officer and Co-founder of Access Strategy Partners Inc., John Strong does a lot of industry number crunching to look for the key headwinds and tailwinds that affect the U.S. healthcare supply chain. As such, there’s no question in Strong’s mind that inflation has played the part of disruptor in the marketplace.
Over the last couple of years, inflation has driven the cost of med/surg supplies and drugs up approximately 21% to 22%. The good news is those percentages are coming down. The bad news is that any increases now are on top of those previous ones.
People are desperate to save wherever they can on supply purchases, said Strong. Unfortunately, this has led to a longstanding focus that’s now being magnified by buyers on price. For smaller purchases, such as commonly used items that are disposables, there’s not a lot of value analysis going on because the payoff is assumed to be small. “But this is where a lot of the price creep has occurred in my opinion,” he said. “These smaller purchases largely get ignored. They’re sometimes contracted by the GPOs. And even with the best intentions of the GPOs, there have been substantial price increases. And so, inflation has hurt everybody, including hospitals with their purchases.”
In the following article, Strong provided Repertoire Magazine with several other observations – and forecasts – of the global healthcare supply chain as 2025 nears.
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