3 Ways HIDA Helps Distributors, Manufacturers, and Healthcare Providers

CME Corp has been a member of the Health Industry Distributors Association (HIDA) for 40+ years and HIDA has been a great partner for us. HIDA is the national trade association for healthcare distributors. Nearly 100% of patient procedures and patient diagnoses involve medical products bought from a distributor. The members operate 500+ distribution centers, delivering medical supplies and equipment the last mile to hospitals, physician offices, nursing homes, laboratories, and home health agencies. HIDA supports and promotes distributors to be the best they can. Here are three ways HIDA has helped through the years.

Networking

HIDA consistently brings distributors, manufacturers, GPOs, and healthcare providers together through conferences, summits, and virtual meetings throughout the year. As a distributor, these meetings have been instrumental for us to meet and collaborate with our strategic manufacturers, GPO partners, and customers. This week HIDA is having two of its more relevant events, the Washington Summit, and the Pandemic Preparedness Summit. The Washington Summit has 100+ HIDA members (including CME), associates, and staff meeting with over one hundred senators and representatives on the Hill to advocate for our industry. The Pandemic Preparedness Summit is a new summit bringing together healthcare supply chain stakeholders and federal partners to work on supply chain solutions and to develop a framework for future pandemic response.

Information and Education

HIDA provides a wealth of information and education for its members. Many of our account managers have gone through the AMS Sales training course, a customized program for healthcare distributor sales representatives. HIDA has done an incredible job these past two years staying ahead of COVID-19 news, whether it was pandemic response or transportation issues. HIDA has been monitoring container delays since COVID-19 began and it is currently 27 days and has been at that number for 60 days. As a reference point, prior to COVID-19 the delay was typically two-three days. This could increase starting in late summer and HIDA will continue to keep us abreast of this important number.

Government Advocacy

This could be the most important pursuit HIDA has right now given the state of the healthcare supply chain. There are four bills HIDA is advocating for and are the ones being talked about this week at Washington Summit.

• PREVENT Pandemics Act (passed Senate Committee) - Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Richard Burr (R-NC), the Chairwoman and Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, introduced the Prepare for and Respond to Existing Viruses, Emerging New Threats and Pandemics Act. (S.3799). The PREVENT Pandemics Act is bipartisan legislation focused on strengthening the nation’s public health and medical preparedness and response systems in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The PREVENT Pandemics Act recognizes the vital role of public-private partnerships in managing medical supplies during a pandemic. The legislation’s approach of building in a distributor-managed inventory component to the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) will better prepare the nation for a future crisis.

• Medical Supplies for Pandemics Act - The Medical Supplies for Pandemics Act (H.R. 3463/S.1693) has been introduced in the House by Representatives Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Jackie Walorski (R-IN) and in the Senate by Senators Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Thom Tillis (R-NC). This bill would strengthen the ability to respond to future pandemics and provide frontline workers the resources they need during public health emergencies.

• Strengthening America’s Strategic National Stockpile Act (Passed the House) - The Strengthening America’s Strategic National Stockpile Act (H.R. 3635/S.1974) was introduced in the House by Representatives Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Richard Hudson (R-NC), and in the Senate by Senators Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA). It includes HIDA’s preparedness policies on distributor-managed inventory and investment in warm-base domestic manufacturing.

HIDA recently advocated for the Bipartisan Innovation Package (USICA/America COMPETES Act)(Passed both chambers) The house and Senate are currently in "conference" negotiation to reconcile their competing legislation on innovation and competitiveness with China. The House legislation included the Strengthening America's National Stockpile Act, which HIDA supports.

About CME Corp.: CME Corp is a full-service healthcare equipment and turn-key logistics company providing personalized support and service.  With service centers nationwide, CME offers more than 2 million medical products from a total of over 2,000 manufacturers.  CME is a healthcare system's complete equipment solution by providing product selection, sales, warehousing, assembly, staging, direct-to-site delivery, installation, and biomedical services for all its equipment.