Vizient Completes Acquisition of Intalere, Now Hiring National Accounts, Bullwhip Effect in Supply Chain, J&J Vaccine Delayed

April 2, 2021

Good Morning NAW Subscribers,

I hope you enjoy this issue of National Accounts Weekly!

John Pritchard

President of ANAE

Publisher of The Journal of Healthcare Contracting

Vizient Completes Acquisition of Intalere

Vizient, Inc. (Irving, TX) announced it has finalized the acquisition of Intalere (St. Louis, MO) from its parent company, Intermountain Healthcare (Salt Lake City, UT).

Vizient says that the acquisition advances its ability to meet the growing needs of its members by:

Helping providers use a robust combination of advanced data, analytics and supply chain resources to drive quality, efficiency and cost performance across the care continuum
Increasing its presence in smaller and/or rural acute care facilities to help support these communities with local healthcare services
Expanding provider access to leading practices, networking and knowledge-sharing with peers

Vizient says it plans to bring the Intalere business fully under the Vizient brand identity by the end of 2021.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is delayed by a U.S. factory mixup

Workers at a plant in Baltimore manufacturing two coronavirus vaccines accidentally conflated the ingredients several weeks ago, contaminating up to 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and forcing regulators to delay authorization of the plant’s production lines.

The error does not affect any Johnson & Johnson doses that are currently being delivered and used nationwide, including the shipments that states are counting on next week.

Further shipments of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine — expected to total 24 million doses in the next month — were supposed to come from the giant plant in Baltimore. Those deliveries are now in question while the quality control issues are sorted out, according to people familiar with the matter.

How to avoid financial disaster from the surplus supply inventory created by the bullwhip effect

The bullwhip effect is a supply chain phenomenon that refers to increasing swings in inventory in response to panic buying on the customer demand side.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created the largest bullwhip effect the healthcare supply chain has ever seen, especially for PPE like masks, gloves and gowns. Last March, hospitals and distributors dramatically increased orders.

Manufacturers responded by increasing production to meet the perceived need without understanding what the true demand was and therefore in the end will likely have over produced supply.

ANAE announces webinar with Michael Berryhill from HealthTrust

ANAE announced it will host a webinar on April 14 at 2:00 p.m. ET. John Pritchard, President of ANAE and Publisher of JHC, will be interviewing Michael Berryhill, COO, at HealthTrust.

HealthTrust partners with over 1,600 hospitals, 43,000 alternate site facilities, and has $45 billion in purchasing power.

ANAE members can register here!

Not a member but want to join? Click here and sign up today!

Northern Light Health plans two new hospital facilities

Northern Light Health (Brewer, ME), an integrated healthcare system, announced the launch of two rural hospital modernization projects that will replace century-old hospital buildings at Northern Light Blue Hill Hospital and Northern Light CA Dean Hospital (Greenville) with new facilities.

The new facilities, which will be located on the existing hospital campuses, will include all private patient rooms, 24/7 full-service emergency departments, lab and imaging services, and more, Northern Light Health said.

Construction on both projects will begin in spring 2022.