Supply Chain

Winter storms have caused delays in shipping 6 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, the White House said last week, according to The Hill. 

Mismanaged stock rooms can significantly increase soft costs like staff time. However, this is one of the most avoidable supply chain mistakes for most health systems.

The FDA issued an alert Feb. 19 saying that pulse oximeters have limitations and that certain factors, including skin pigmentation, may affect the device's accuracy. 

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

Managing the healthcare supply chain continues to grow in intricacy, especially as integrated delivery networks expand their non-acute footprints and care moves to outpatient settings, explained Ken Rasbid, National Sales Director at Dublin, Ohio-based Cardinal Health. 

The Department of Homeland Security said Feb. 17 it has seized more than 11 million counterfeit 3M N95 masks ordered by healthcare facilities in the last few weeks, CNBC reported. 

Medtronic is recalling its Valiant Navion thoracic stent graft system after discovering three patients in a clinical trial had stent fractures and one patient death was reported, the medical devicemaker said Feb. 17. 

HHS has awarded a medical devicemaker a $54.2 million contract to supply the U.S. with specialty syringes used to extract extra doses of vaccines from their vials, according to a Feb. 16 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

The mass COVID-19 vaccination site at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and several other vaccine sites across the city that were shut last week due to supply shortages are set to reopen Feb. 16, the Los Angeles Times reported, but…

Hospitals are facing shortages of supplies such as sterile water and pipette tips due to the spike in COVID-19 hospitalizations during the winter months, according to data from Premier cited by The Hill.