What Do Tariffs Mean for Hospitals, Emergency Preparedness?

The short answer: Time will tell but it’s time to get ready

The political tension around tariffs and the potential impact on goods and supplies is hard to avoid right now.

This moment almost feels like a fast-moving weather event, because we’re all checking our feeds for updates on policies that are likely to have a global impact on the supplies we need in our facilities.

As emergency managers we are tasked with pulling away from the "charged" situations to remember our core mission areas: prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery.

We do not pretend to be masters of international trade, but we all need to be masters of situational awareness. For us, that means thinking ahead about how a new environment for tariffs could affect our preparedness.

Lessons from the past

Experience in supply chain disruption offers lessons for us now. Emergency managers, along with many other leaders in health care, were introduced to severe supply chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic. These supply issues reached a level that we had never experienced before. 

I can think of more recent examples, such as the flooding of the North Carolina plant where IV fluid disruption occurred for several months and the potential port shutdown that placed hospitals on high-alert.

Sometimes these events strike us without notice, and we must react quickly. Other times, we have urgency because a situation brewing and we need to review our plans and strategies to ensure that we can mitigate the situation to our best ability.

Key questions

As we continue to watch the current situation unfold, a few basic questions come to mind:

1. Are we still relying on just in time inventory in any of our departments? This may be a time when we could see some changes to timely shipments.
2. Do we have any single source reliance in terms of manufacturers? If that is the case, this may be an optimal time to collaborate with our supply chain to look for additional options, even if the pricing is not optimal. You should have a handle on where your key suppliers produce and distribute their products in our global supply chain.
3. Would price increases cause your finance department to spur looking into additional supply chain options? Possibly anticipate that ahead of time and begin the search early.
4. Is there necessity to move to different products than our current stock? If so, there may be additional competency requirements with new products.

What’s next?

As we saw during other times of uncertainty, these events impact our health systems at various points. Contractors and vendors that we routinely work with may see impacts and that could cause variation in their normal costs. We appreciate when things run smoothly, but we know that we shouldn’t take routine bills or deliveries for granted.

With all that consideration, this could also pass by like a weather event that doesn't cause the impact that was predicted. Hopefully the latter is true, but as emergency managers are accustomed, it’s time to lean forward.

For more information, contact Ryan Weaver, MBA, BSN, RN, CPPS, CHEP, manager, emergency management.

 

Return to Blog main page.