Don Carroll discusses supply chain visibility with Healthcare Purchasing News
Our VP of Business Development, Don Carroll, joins Healthcare Purchasing News for their annual 2020-2021 Healthcare Product All-Stars article to discuss how a lack of visibility in the healthcare supply is negatively impacting patient care, and how VPL is helping our customers resolve these issues with our total visibility software solutions.
“It’s a well-known fact that lack of visibility into the healthcare supply chain causes a lack of productivity and a threat to high-quality patient care,” said Don Carroll, Vice President, Business Development, VPL Inc. “The COVID-19 pandemic shed new light on these issues, revealing several critical vulnerabilities throughout medical device and pharmaceutical supply chains, including demand surges for critical supplies, secondary product shortages and transportation network breakdowns. Even worse, these fractures occurred with little to no transparency and visibility between manufacturers and providers. Although the resulting deferred elective procedures create a future promise of financial recovery, it’s critical for health systems to understand what can be done right now to improve visibility and build a more resilient supply chain in the future.”
VPL conducted a survey in 2020 asking healthcare providers – clinicians specifically – how the lack of visibility in the supply chain affected them, according to Carroll.
“More than 60 percent of the respondents said they are spending valuable time tracking packages on carrier websites and contacting suppliers regarding shipping status, which means they’re doing the work of the supply chain rather than operating at the top of their clinical license,” Carroll noted. “And of the 74 percent of clinicians spending time tracking the status of PPI orders, 44 percent of them are investing a whopping 10 percent of their time each week chasing delivery status. Lack of visibility and lost, expired and backordered products lead to a host of problems, including delayed or cancelled procedures, use of less-than-optimal products, and a lot of wasted time on the part of clinicians.”
As a result, VPL developed VPL View, a healthcare supply chain visibility software that enables health systems to see vital product moving through their network from point of manufacture all the way to final point of patient care.
Read the full article written by Rick Dana Barlow here.
Schedule a demo to learn more about VPL’s supply chain solutions and speak with a member of our team today!
