The key pillars to building a resilient healthcare supply chain

Healthcare is dealing with a crisis of complexity. The industry is experiencing seismic shifts while continuing to face rising costs across the board and supply chain disruptions leading to medical device shortages. In this conversation with Medline CEO Jim Boyle, he outlines the strategy health systems need to build a resilient supply chain. He also explains Medline’s unique partnership approach with healthcare providers.

Hospitals and health systems continue to experience medical device shortages. What’s the current state of the U.S. supply chain?

Jim Boyle: Health systems need a resilient and robust supply chain so that caregivers have the products they need when they need them. We are just a few years out from a global pandemic, and many providers are still struggling to avoid inventory challenges. Recent tariffs on imported medical supplies have exacerbated these supply chain issues. Additionally, a lack of standardization from facility to facility makes inventory planning more challenging and can lead to product shortages. This all points to a simple yet stark reality for healthcare systems in the U.S. today: if your costs are not contained, and you can’t get the medical supplies you need, then it is nearly impossible to deliver the best patient care. Medline is proud to deliver the lowest cost of care for our healthcare customers and maintain best-in-class fill rates to help us serve 95% of U.S. customers with next-day delivery.

What should be the key pillars of a health system's supply chain strategy to address challenges?

JB: The most successful health system supply chains today are focused on three areas: resiliency, diversification and robust partnerships. Leaders in our industry are being tasked with ensuring the supply chain can not only stand up to ongoing strains but also the next big crisis. They’re also being asked to build this resiliency without adding unnecessary cost.
For Medline, our mission of making healthcare run better requires us to get the right product to the right place at the right time for our customers. To do this, we’ve built and continue to invest in a resilient, sustainable and robust supply chain enabled by more than 28 million square feet of distribution space across more than 50 North American locations, with nearly $4 billion of inventory on hand and an owned fleet of over 2,000 MedTrans delivery trucks.
Diversification has become a vital strategy for strengthening the resilience of healthcare supply chains. Medline has increasingly become not only a manufacturer of high-quality products and a provider of highly reliable distribution, but also a strategic partner, offering diversification and supply chain expertise. Perhaps most importantly, we want to ensure that we have moved beyond transactional relationships with our customers and become embedded partners. We want our customers to know that we truly understand the intricacies of their business and have more than just the ability to solve their challenges but anticipate them.

How can the supply chain be more resilient in response to natural disasters or other disruptions that cause product shortages?

JB: Our experience during the pandemic helped us learn and execute in the face of incredible supply chain challenges. These learnings refined an already resilient supply chain process, which we have maintained through more recent obstacles. While diversification is at the heart of a resilient supply chain, we also work with health systems around the country on supply chain and emergency preparedness planning to help ensure facilities are prepared to handle events impacting their communities. A clearly defined disaster preparedness plan, combined with efficient inventory management and logistics, can impact a health system’s ability to provide uninterrupted care in the event of a crisis.

Medline is expanding its physical footprint in the Chicagoland area. What’s behind Medline’s growth strategy?

JB: While we continue to grow our business worldwide and our footprint in the Chicagoland area, our relentless focus on the customer is what got Medline to where we are today and will keep us headed in the right direction for years to come. We succeed because everything we do starts and ends with our customers. I have always known that we have a special group of employees at Medline, but in the year since I became CEO, I have been continually impressed with how quickly teams across the company react to problems and deliver solutions for our customers. That willingness to create flexible and customized solutions allows us to differentiate ourselves in the market and grow alongside healthcare systems as they evolve and take on new points of care.

To learn more visit: medline.com