The Food and Drug Administration has approved a new type of swab to use for COVID-19 testing in response to a critical shortage of cotton swabs, which has been one of the biggest obstacles in expanding COVID-19 testing in the U.S. 

In a recent press release, North American Partners in Anesthesia (NAPA), one of the leading single-specialty anesthesia and perioperative management companies in the U.S., and Air Methods, the leading air medical service company, announced they have partnered to provide 34 portable, critical-care ventilators to New York’s largest healthcare system.

Ten hospitals and health systems posted job listings for supply chain expertise in the last week:

A group of private and nonprofit organizations including Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft and the American Hospital Association are launching an app called Protecting People Everywhere that will provide personal protective equipment to hospitals in need. 

Abbott Laboratories is launching a COVID-19 antibody test and will ship nearly 1 million tests this week, the company said April 15. 

Quest Diagnostics, the commercial lab that has performed about 800,000 COVID-19 tests, is furloughing more than 4,000 employees, which is about 9 percent of its workforce, CBS News reports.

The American Medical Association is urging the Federal Emergency Management Agency to establish a national distribution system for personal protective equipment to ease the burden on hospitals and states.

The U.S. government will nearly double the amount it pays hospitals and medical centers to process Abbott's COVID-19 diagnostic test, CMS said April 15. 

Public health experts agree that widespread diagnostic testing is the first step toward lifting social distancing orders and adjusting to a new normal post COVID-19. 

The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene sent out a memo April 11 warning the city may run out of test swabs used to diagnose COVID-19, The Hill reported. 

The FDA has granted three emergency use authorizations allowing companies to sterilize N95 masks to be reused by hospital workers. 

When you distribute products just in time (JIT) based on the most logical (low) unit-of-measure possible, you can take a proactive approach to reducing costs and waste caused by expiring products.

As more and more patients seek care in lower-cost outpatient settings, health systems are working to meet the demands of this migration by expanding nonacute offerings. This expansion requires the acquisition or development of new care locations, which will transform the health system’s continuum of care and organizational structure.

More than 90 percent of the 1 million COVID-19 diagnostic tests Abbott has delivered to labs across the U.S. aren't being used because labs don't have the resources to process the tests, MedTech Dive reported. 

Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals are facing severe shortages of personal protective equipment and are being forced to ration face masks, hospital workers told The Wall Street Journal. 

The government will start seizing exports of personal protective equipment at its borders to decide whether it should be kept in the U.S. to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic, The Hill reported. 

Philips will build 43,000 ventilators for the Strategic National Stockpile under a $646.7 million contract with HHS, the agency said April 8. 

Ten hospitals and health systems posted job listings for supply chain expertise in the last week:

The strategic national stockpile of personal protective equipment has been depleted, and states won't be receiving any more shipments, The Hill reported. 

Ventilators have made national headlines as the U.S. grapples with a shortage of the medical device used to give breathing support to the most severely ill COVID-19 patients.