July 17, 2020
To our Network of ANAE Members & NAW Followers:
 
I hope you enjoy this issue of National Accounts Weekly!
Be Well,

Scott M. Pecore
President, ANAE
Sutter Health request to delay $575M settlement is denied 
Sutter Health (Sacramento, CA) requested a delay on a $575 million settlement it reached last December over accusations of price gouging and monopolistic practices.

Citing the surge in coronavirus cases and economic fallout from the pandemic, Sutter Health argued it needed three additional months to decide whether it should try to abandon the settlement terms.

However, a California state judge denied Sutter Health’s request, scheduling a hearing next month on the preliminary agreement. 
North Florida's MedNexus to connect healthcare and education 
A recently approved $6 million state grant will fund the first phase of the University of North Florida’s (UNF) planned MedNexus, which will help address an expected shortage of healthcare professionals.

MedNexus will connect healthcare providers with university students, faculty and researchers. It will be based at UNF’s Jacksonville, FL, campus, where simulation and medical technology labs will be built.

Partners include Ascension St. Vincent’s, Memorial Hospital Jacksonville, Baptist Health, UF Health and Flagler Hospital.
Covid-19's effects on National Account Executives
The current Association of National Account Executives (ANAE) COVID-19 survey shows fascinating results.
  • 13% of respondents expect to be down over 50% to plan in 2020, one-third of respondents said their companies would be down at least 25%. 
  • 27% of respondents’ companies have had lay offs, 6% of furloughs or layoffs were in national accounts.
Doctors, nurses warn of another protective gear shortage as coronavirus surges
Front-line medical workers and doctors in private practice are again sounding the alarm over ongoing shortages of protective gear.

Months after some New York City nurses were forced to wear garbage bags for protection, the shortage of protective gear impacting rural and urban hospitals, nursing homes and private physicians' offices is one of several problems with the nation's pandemic response that have resurfaced again.

They also expressed frustration with the lack of transparency with the state of the supply chain, and President Trump’s refusal to leverage the Defense Production Act to compel producers to scale up operations to prepare for the resurgence of the virus.
Which hospitals have suspended elective surgeries? A list, state by state
Unlike the initial surge of COVID-19 in the United States this spring, fewer hospitals are choosing to suspend elective surgeries despite an increase in coronavirus patients in several states. Here are organizations that have done so as of July 10.

  • Huntsville (Ala.) Hospital is suspending elective surgeries that require overnight stays.
  • Effective July 8, six-hospital Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, Fla., suspended all elective, non-urgent and nonemergency procedures. 
  • Effective July 10, BayCare Health System is reducing the number of non-urgent surgeries performed at its Pinellas County hospitals in Florida: St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg; Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater; Mease Countryside Hospital in Safety Harbor; and Mease Dunedin Hospital.
Novant Health’s $5 billion deal to buy NC hospital system wins county’s favor
The New Hanover County Board of Commissioners voted Monday night to move forward with the more than $5 billion deal to sell the Wilmington hospital system to Novant Health.
The Winston-Salem-based Novant’s proposal includes purchasing the medical center from New Hanover County for about $2 billion, along with $2.5 billion in capital investments and $600 million in other costs.
ANAE Facebook
The Association of National Account Executives (ANAE) now has a Facebook page!

Ed Hisscock, SVP, Supply Chain Management for Trinity Health, shared some great insights into the priorities of Trinity Health, best practices, and information about how suppliers can better partner with Trinity Health. You can listen to this webinar for free by joining the Facebook group with the icon below. You can also see this module and all the other ANAE webinars by joining ANAE with the link below.
Vermont hospitals lost $107 million due to Covid-19
Vermont’s hospitals reported $107 million in losses since the start of the fiscal year due to Covid-19, which state regulators called “very troubling.” 

Combined, Vermont’s 14 hospitals reported a combined $77 million in losses in March and April alone.  The University of Vermont Medical Center reported nearly $100 million in losses so far this fiscal year; only about half of that came directly from medical care and other related operations. 

About half of the state’s 14 hospitals were already bleeding money before the pandemic hit; six reported losses in 2019.
PPE Safety Stock Planning: Prepare Now for Future Supply Disruption 
Global shortages of PPE supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic exposed a number of weaknesses in the Assurance of Supply principle.

To prepare for subsequent resurgences of cases, many health care organizations (HCOs) have begun planning to build safety stock caches of PPE supplies to mitigate future shortages.

While there is no proven playbook for dealing with the impact of COVID-19 from a supply chain perspective, a crisis typically plays out over three stages: reaction, recovery and preparation. Where are you in the continuum?
As vaccine hopes rise, US races to buy syringes to avoid shortage scenario
As scientists race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, some experts warned that syringes could become the next face masks – coveted items in short supply able to plunge the market into chaos.

But it appears that the federal government and health care supply companies learned a lesson from the mad scramble for masks and other personal protective equipment that came to symbolize the early weeks of the pandemic.

Rather than wait for a viable vaccine to stock up on syringes, the federal government is securing them now. To date, it has signed at least $260 million in contracts for their production.
John Pritchard
Publisher of National Accounts Weekly


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