Healthcare Anchor Network

a growing national collaboration of 65 leading healthcare systems building more inclusive and sustainable local economies

Impact Purchasing Commitment (IPC)

Impact Purchasing Commitment (IPC)

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In signing the Healthcare Anchor Network’s (HAN) Impact Purchasing Commitment (IPC), health systems commit to aligning their purchasing power with clinical and community efforts to improve societal health and well-being and to catalyze prosperity for all, particularly those impacted by a legacy of divestment and discrimination. It is estimated that roughly one in five (or 420,000) small businesses have closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. These closures have disproportionately impacted small businesses owned by immigrants, women, and Black, Latinx, and Asian individuals, all of which have experienced higher rates of closures and sharper declines in cash balances. 

Signatories commit to establishing specific goals to increase spend with vendors that are minority and women owned, sustainable, local, and build community wealth. In addition to setting these goals, signatories will collect and submit data on their progress toward these goals to the Healthcare Anchor Network in order to ensure accountability and transparency. 

We’ve launched this commitment with 12 initial signatories who have committed collectively to increase their spend with minority and women owned businesses (MWBEs) by $1 billion by 2025. We will continue to welcome new signatories to set their five year goals related to supplier diversity, sustainability, and community wealth building in alignment with the commitment’s provisions. Below is a summary of these goals. 

For supplier diversity, most signatories individually commit to at least doubling their current Tier I non-construction spend with MWBEs within five years. Additionally, signatories are establishing MWBE goals for construction spend, and working with their top 20 Tier I vendors to gather and track Tier II data.

For sustainability, signatories commit to selecting a minimum of four Core Sustainability Goals, and to achieving each goal within five years. These goals were designed in partnership with Practice Greenhealth and leverage their expertise in environmentally sustainable healthcare. For more information on the specifics of the sustainability provisions, visit their website. 

For community wealth building, signatories commit to establishing and tracking progress towards five year spend goals with vendors that are (1) locally headquartered, owned, and operated (at the neighborhood or regional level), and (2) majority employee-owned, cooperatively owned and/or nonprofit-owned enterprises. Moreover, signatories commit to work with service contract vendors to pay a living local wage within five years.

Finally, signatories commit to implementing strategies, policies, and practices to incentivize internal departments, vendors, and GPOs to engage in impact purchasing. This includes aligning internal operations to support impact purchasing; engaging GPOs to support the implementation of this commitment; building capacity in diverse, local, and employee-owned businesses to support community wealth building; and enabling a more resilient and equitable supply chain ecosystem.

Impact Purchasing Commitment (IPC) Signatories

Impact Purchasing Commitment (IPC) Case Studies

Impact Purchasing Commitment (IPC) Announcement News Coverage