As product shortages continue to challenge healthcare operations across the country, supply chain leaders are doubling down on proactive measures to protect essential procedures from disruptions.
Here are responses from four supply chain leaders who were asked: What is one strategy your team has found effective in managing or mitigating the impact of product shortages on essential procedures?
Note: Responses were lightly edited for length and clarity.
Marisa Farabaugh. Chief Supply Chain Officer at AdventHealth (Altamonte Springs, Fla.): Healthcare supply chain resiliency is essential to delivering consistent, high-quality patient care across our communities at AdventHealth. It’s an ongoing journey that requires a commitment to learning and continuous improvement, with a proactive mindset geared toward action and process re-engineering.
- Our supply chain team has embraced this approach by establishing new governance structures and cross-functional oversight teams. These groups monitor potential item disruption, ensuring swift and coordinated responses as early as possible.
- A cornerstone of our resiliency strategy is the development of our Consolidated Service Center, which enables us to maintain optimal inventory levels of critical products. This infrastructure supports our ability to respond effectively to supply challenges while maintaining continuity in patient care.
- We also prioritize building strong, trust-based relationships with our supplier community — partners who are vital to the success of our supply chain operations.
Resiliency remains a guiding principle for AdventHealth’s supply chain strategy. It’s heavily considered with every decision we make, ensuring we remain agile, responsive and focused on our mission to serve.
Carlos Maceda. Chief Supply Chain Officer at Mount Sinai Health System (New York City): Mount Sinai Health System early on invested in a 3PL model with our distributor, Medline. It allows us to quickly purchase products when shortages are forthcoming and integrate it with our LUM program to have a seamless process. Along with these changes we have created an exhaustive substitute list of clinically approved items. Our supply chain clinicians have access to all necessary clinicians throughout the system to add to this list in a timely fashion as well. Speed to action is the key to all mitigation strategies.
John Mikesic. Executive Director of Supply Chain at University of Missouri Health Care (Columbia): We treat every supply as essential — because any missing item can delay care. We protect procedures by pairing regular cross-functional huddles with a live warehouse inventory dashboard that flags days of cover, usage spikes, fill-rate dips and promise-date slips across sites. When risk emerges, the team can vet and review clinically appropriate substitutions with our service lines or rebalance stock, then push same-day pick/label updates and notify clinical leads. Working from a single source of truth across purchasing, distribution, and the warehouse keeps disruptions upstream — before they touch the schedule or the bedside.
Ivan Popoff. Supply Chain Operations Executive at Adventist Health (Roseville, Calif.): At Adventist Health, we take a proactive, collaborative approach to managing product shortages in the surgical space. Our supply chain and clinical teams align through weekly surgical schedule reviews and daily look-ahead meetings. Led by surgical supply coordinators and supported by the full surgical team, these efforts ensure critical implants and supplies are in stock and ready for use at the time of procedure — supporting both continuity and patient safety.
