COVID-19 has revealed that outsourcing medical equipment supply chains to other countries can lead to significant shortages. As a result, hospitals and health systems are looking to local vendors for PPEs and other needed supplies. For example, HAN member Trinity Health contracted with a local woman-owned and -led company, Detroit Sewn, to produce 50,000 masks for the pandemic, leading to 13 new expected hires. However, these are supplier contracts mostly for the short-term emergency situation.
HAN members have been and continue to be engaged in implementation strategies for sourcing from local and diverse suppliers. The pandemic has also led institutions to think about how to address the medical supply chain issues moving forward and how to create supplier opportunities for shuttered or downsized businesses to help be an early spark for economic recovery efforts.
From the article in Next City:
The goal is to leverage the power of these anchor institutions as a reliable, built-in market to create community wealth and local opportunity. Anchor institutions, [TDC’s Co-Founder & Director Ted] Howard says, make up $1.2 trillion dollars, or 9 percent of the US GDP. That’s a substantial sum to keep localized.
The shift to re-localization and import replacement is threefold, encompassing local hiring, local investment, and cultivating a local supply chain.