UCI to build $1B hospital, Now Hiring Job Posts, COVID variants point to dangers ahead, Vizient invests with USA PPE manufacturers

January 29, 2021

Good Morning NAW Subscribers,

I hope you can join me February 10 for the JHC Self-Distributing IDNs webinar. We have a great panel for our discussion that you do not want to miss! Be sure to register below.

Enjoy this issue of National Accounts Weekly!

John Pritchard

President of ANAE

Publisher of The Journal of Healthcare Contracting

Vizient invests with PPE manufacturers to expand, stabilize U.S.-based supply

Vizient, Inc. has entered into strategic partnership agreements with Encompass, Standard Textile, and Prestige Ameritech in order to expand the available supply of a variety of needed personal protective equipment (PPE) items.

Building on an earlier agreement with Encompass Group, LLC for 19 million disposable gowns, in August, Vizient announced a new agreement with the company to provide an additional 65 million AAMI level 3 disposable isolation gowns manufactured annually in North America to its member hospitals.

Since then, Vizient has partnered to help Encompass start a new, automated manufacturing line for disposable gowns in the U.S., bringing both supply and onshore resiliency for these products, the company says.

The new manufacturing line is expected to be up and running in the first quarter of 2022.

OSF HealthCare to acquire Perry Memorial Hospital

Perry Memorial Hospital (Princeton, IL) and OSF HealthCare, along with the Princeton City Council have signed an affiliation agreement that will allow for a transfer of ownership of Perry Memorial Hospital from the City of Princeton to OSF HealthCare.

OSF HealthCare is an integrated health system with nearly 24,000 Mission Partners employees. Its physician network employees more than 1,500 primary care, specialist physicians, and advanced practice providers.

Thank you to our sponsor!

Join us on February 10 at 2:00 PM ET for The Journal of Healthcare Contracting’s Self-Distribution Webinar. This webinar will explore the trends, advantages, opportunities, and challenges U.S. IDNs face when considering and engaging in self-distribution.

Learn how they are faring during the Covid-19 challenge and how will they proceed to mitigate supply interruptions. This webinar will be moderated by Brent Petty.

Confirmed Panelists:

Michael Martin, Vice President, Supply Chain Operations, Trinity Health
Jamie Kowalski, Consultant, Jamie Kowalski Consulting
Tim Nedley, Vice President Materials Management, UPMC
Paul Oppat, Executive Director, Supply Chain Services, Banner Health

COVID-19 cases drop, but variants point to dangers ahead

The number of Americans testing positive for the coronavirus has dropped substantially from early January, easing the strain on hospitals across the nation that faced danger over the winter holidays. But new and more transmissible strains of the coronavirus are circulating more widely across the world.

The CDC estimates those strains will become dominant in the United States in the coming weeks. On Thursday, the CDC said it had identified the first two strains of the South African variant in South Carolina.

“This is the calm before the real storm. I think the darkest days of the pandemic are just ahead of us,” said Michael Osterholm, who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Prevention at the University of Minnesota.

The federal government has distributed about 47 million doses of vaccine, and just more than half of those doses have been administered, according to federal data.

Cleveland Clinic, Doctors Hospital Health System partner to expand, improve healthcare services in the Bahamas

Cleveland Clinic and Doctors Hospital Health System have formed a strategic advisory council with the goal of expanding and improving the delivery of healthcare services in the Bahamas.

Cleveland Clinic and Doctors Hospital will work together on various projects that include significant expansion into outpatient services by Doctors Hospital, as well as the development of centers of excellence in the Bahamas where Cleveland Clinic’s resources will offer significant advantage, acceleration and support to Doctors Hospital.

UCI to build $1B hospital on Irvine campus

The University of California Irvine plans to build a $1 billion hospital campus that will house a 144-bed acute-care facility, ambulatory care center, and cancer center.

The hospital will focus on key clinical programs such as oncology, neurology, neurosurgery, orthopedics and digestive health, and will include a 24-hour emergency department.

The first patients are expected in late 2022 in the UCI Health Center for Advanced Care, pending legal and regulatory approvals, and the hospital is set for completion in 2025.

Hospitals lost $20B by pausing electives last year

U.S. hospitals lost more than $20 billion from suspending elective surgeries over three months at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic's onset in this country, according to an article published recently in the Annals of Surgery.

A Transunion brief released Wednesday suggested hospital patient volumes won't return to pre-pandemic levels at any point this year. It showed that in the back half of 2019, emergency room visits were down 22% year over year and inpatient visits dropped 7%.