Support the Healthcare Supply Chain to Win Accounts in 2021

Healthcare systems across the U.S. are looking at improving patient outcomes by delivering a better patient experience. In the post-pandemic world, this includes strengthening the healthcare supply chain so that hospitals have available supplies, vaccines, medical devices, and other resources to better serve patients.

In 2020, too many hospitals were unable to meet patient demand because of supply chain disruptions. Critical supplies and medicines were located offshore, leaving hospitals vulnerable to shortages and the inability to provide care to patients.

Now, the healthcare industry is waking up to the reality of needing to build a more robust supply chain that will enable hospitals to provide a better quality of care to patients. This includes better inventory management, reconfiguring vendor and partner relationships, ensuring access to Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and even re-thinking master planning of where to place hospitals.

Construction and design firms that are involved in the healthcare space need to be aware of what healthcare systems are thinking about in 2021. This way, you can embed your firm as a trusted partner delivering valuable solutions that support healthcare supply chain management.

Healthcare Systems Are Re-thinking Supply Chain Relationships

One of the big changes for 2021 and moving forward is that healthcare systems are actively thinking through how to reconfigure the hundreds or thousands of vendors, consultants, and partners that support their healthcare supply chain.

While cost savings still remains incredibly valuable, there is now a high priority on ensuring the quality of the relationship to deliver supplies, medicine, and other resources at the exact right moment. Or, just-in-time.

The disruption created by the pandemic laid bare the performance of these existing relationships. Vendors and other partners that were the weakest link in the supply chain were exposed. And, alternatively, the partners that could deliver in a pinch were seen as much more valuable.

Now, supply chain leaders are looking to build a stronger army of partners using the lessons learned during the disruption. Who stepped up? Who didn’t step up? Whose services directly supported the patient experience? Whose services contributed to further challenges?

Construction and design firms should be aware of how these questions are impacting the long term thinking of supply chain decision-makers in hospital systems. Ensure that your firm is ready to step into a situation and provide a solution that helps solve the larger problem for your target customers.

Healthcare Systems Are Thinking About Micro-Hospitals

Want to know what the wave of the future looks like in the healthcare space? Micro-hospitals. Think about it as the “retail-ization” of healthcare to better serve patients and optimize the patient experience.

Decision-makers are re-thinking master plans after the pandemic; they’re thinking through whether to build more micro-hospitals rather than introducing another mega-hospital building in established medical centers.

Shawn Cloonan, the former COO of the Texas Medical Center, said it best during our recent healthcare webinar, that the pandemic served as a reminder that healthcare is local. And, healthcare systems are re-thinking how to bring healthcare to the people, rather than asking people to come to them.

This means greater opportunities for construction and design firms to support the construction of micro-hospitals in urban, suburban, and rural areas. It’s bigger than simply building a micro-hospital, though. Supply chain is essential. How are supplies, medicine, equipment, and other critical healthcare necessities going to be delivered and stored at each of these new hospitals?

Construction and design firms need to think about a larger solution that incorporates opportunities to optimize the supply chain at each location. Speak the language of health system leaders by addressing this in your proposed project scope.

Healthcare Systems Are Looking Into Local Sourcing

Another key element of optimizing the healthcare supply chain involves local sourcing. Hospital systems are looking into how to locally-source medicine, PPE, equipment, and other supplies to better protect themselves from supply chain disruptions.

This means looking into opportunities for medical cold storage and warehouse storage partnerships at the local level. Instead of depending on supplies to arrive in 1-2 weeks from an offshore location across the world, hospitals can ideally receive what they need in 1-2 days.

Before the pandemic, this was an afterthought. The cost savings from a global medical supply were simply too great to even think about shifting to local sourcing. But, this left healthcare systems vulnerable without realizing it. The pandemic exposed the vulnerability, contributing to the public health crisis.

Now, construction and design firms need to think through how to bring together project/scope delivery partners and other third-parties to support a comprehensive solution that incorporates local sourcing. Think about how to help your target customer build an exceptionally robust, managed supply chain that ties everything together to solve the larger problem facing healthcare in 2021 and beyond.

Find Support With Healthcare Conversations to Win Work

At RESET, we work with numerous construction and design firms in the healthcare space. We understand how to help firms have conversations with decision-makers, stakeholders, Boards, and other stakeholders about project scope delivery that is tied back to each healthcare system’s mission of providing quality healthcare to patients.

Big capital spending and long term capital projects come with a significant amount of interaction with various stakeholders. We can help you understand how to talk about the supply chain and how to craft comprehensive solutions that incorporate various supply chain elements to present to decision-makers.

Through our proven methodology, The Connection Process, we can help you leverage these connections to win more accounts in 2021 and create faster, more sustainable revenue.

Find out more about how we can help facilitate these conversations and build the right relationships. Contact us today to schedule a consultation. We are here to help you support the healthcare supply chain.