By: Hellen Zaboulani

The Pandemic has changed how hospitals stock up on supplies.

The Coronavirus pandemic caught hospitals off guard, with severe shortages in personal protective equipment, such as disposable gowns, masks and gloves. Hospitals ended up struggling without necessary supplies, paying exorbitant prices for them, and depending on charities to obtain them. By contrast, now New York hospitals are sitting on stockpiles of gear—including millions of masks. “There are some items that are going to take us six to nine months to kind of wean down because we bought so much of it. And then, there’s items we might have for years,” said Carlos Maceda, vice president and chief supply chain officer at Mount Sinai Health System in New York. “It will last us forever the amount of masks that we have.”

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, executives say now hospitals are buying differently. In fear of having their orders unmet, they started diversify their suppliers and skillfully ascertaining where the raw materials are sourced. “The good part of the worst part of the pandemic is that it gave us the ability to diversify our suppliers,” said Danielle DiBari, senior vice president of business operations and chief pharmacy officer for NYC Health + Hospitals. “If something, God forbid, happens in the way that mimics the beginning of the pandemic, we have a lot more or different avenues to go to get our supplies.”

The state is now enjoying some respite from the pandemic, despite the looming threat of the Delta variant. The governor-ordered COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted. For now, though, state hospitals are still required to maintain a 90-day stockpile of PPE equipment. The mandate, set in May 2020, is calculated by taking a hospital’s height-of-the-pandemic usage, and multiplying it by 90 days.

Thanks to contracts signed during the height of the pandemic, though, some hospitals are sitting on even more PPE than the state requirement. In order to convince manufacturers to dramatically increase production of certain products, healthcare systems had to sign multiyear contracts for very large orders, executives told the WSJ.

In fact, some NYC area hospitals have central warehouses to house the supplies, while others hold supplies with a distributor. Mount Sinai is now looking to take on a 100,000 square feet warehouse, said Mr. Maceda. Northwell Health, the state’s biggest hospital system, pays roughly $4 million a year to warehouse its supplies, said Donna Drummond, senior vice president and chief expense officer. Stockpiling 90 days of peak-pandemic medical supplies is excessive, she said.