Vizient recommends supply chain leaders at health systems keep close watch of a looming, potential strike on East Coast and Gulf Coast ports.
Since fall 2023, the International Longshoremen's Association has told its members to prepare for a tentative coast-wide strike. The union is currently negotiating with the United States Maritime Alliance for a six-year contract, and if an agreement is not reached, ILA said a strike will begin Oct. 1.
The contract covers about 14,500 port workers on the East Coast and Gulf Coast, according to the USMX. There has not been a coast-wide strike since 1977, according to ILA and USMX. Becker's reached out to the ILA about how many workers might go on strike, but the union could not share a figure.
"This is certainly not a situation for a rash reaction," Bill Selles, senior vice president of transformation and operations for spend management at Vizient, told Becker's.
Vizient, a healthcare improvement and group purchasing organization, notified its member organizations in April about the situation.
A strike "certainly would be disruptive, but there are some known mitigation approaches to take," said Mr. Selles, the former senior vice president of supply chain for Corewell Health.
He added that hospital leaders have "institutional memory" from similar contract disagreements on the West Coast in 2023.
Suppliers have not voiced concerns with Vizient, he said. If a contract is not ratified soon, though, medical device manufacturing, distribution and supply companies might divert shipments — which require planning far in advance as some routes take weeks.
Other U.S. ports have the capacity to accept more supply, Mr. Selles said, but six of the 10 busiest ports in the country are on the East and Gulf Coasts. If a strike happens, some disruption will happen.
"At this point, we're really not recommending any specific buy ups for members," he said. "We saw through the COVID-19 pandemic that a lot of organizations had panic buying, and that actually exacerbated a problem, and in some cases created a problem.
"In this situation, we don't have specific actions that we're recommending the provider organizations to take other than a lot of the things that we would say generally," including continuous communication with suppliers in the weeks ahead.