How Advantus Health Partners Handles the National Drug Shortage Crisis

Organizational Procedure

Insight provided by Craig Wright, Vice President of Pharmacy Services

Nov 07, 2023

Jessica Levco, Healthcare Journalist & Pharmacy Angle Contributor

Craig Wright, Vice President of Pharmacy Services at Advantus Health Partners, says the one of the biggest obstacles our industry faces today is the national drug shortage crisis.

“There’s a lot of disruption that’s happening and it's indiscriminate of the continuum of healthcare,” Wright says. “We've seen shortages in the physician office space, retail pharmacy, specialty pharmacy and home health. There are drug shortages in every therapy class — medications used for anesthesia, oncology and pediatrics, for example.”

What concerns Wright the most is the randomness of it.

“One day, it might be a shortage in one therapy class and another day, it could be another class,” Wright says. “It’s difficult to forecast exactly what shortage is next.”

But even though it seems random, drug shortages are historic, Wright says.

“Shortages were here before the pandemic,” Wright says. “But that has continued, post-pandemic. Add the labor shortage issue to the supply chain disruption — it’s no wonder why drug shortages are at the worst levels we’ve ever seen.”

Craig Wright, Vice President of Pharmacy Services at Advantus Health Partners

One reason why the shortage is so dire is because the U.S. relies heavily on overseas pharmaceutical production. A silver lining to the shortage is that he thinks the U.S. government and private sector will both bring back production domestically. This will happen slowly because it takes time to build infrastructure, but Wright is optimistic that the U.S. can be a leader in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

But for now, Advantus Health Partners can’t wait for pharmaceutical production to start in the U.S. Pharmaceutical leaders have to act now, based on the situation we’re in.

To deal with the shortage problem, Advantus Health Partners isn’t going to solve the issue from a contract or sourcing perspective. He said his team looks at broad and encompassing solutions, instead of focusing on one channel to overcome the issue.

“It’s great to have relationships with partners in the supplier world, but when one supplier goes down, you have to have a broad net to solve the problem,” Wright says. “Sometimes, we can find a solution through another supplier or another vendor. But what differentiates our organization is that we have a full-fledged operations team that has industry experience in clinical alternatives, inventory, distribution and advanced purchasing options, including both safety stock and bulk purchasing activities.”

That being said, he knows shortages are stressful to patients — and for doctors and pharmacists who have to explain what’s happening.

“Patients don’t have to go out there and try to solve the drug shortage problem, but they need to be educated on what’s happening,” Wright says. “Having an active conversation with your healthcare provider is going to put you in a better place of knowing how to look for alternatives and what works best for you.”

Wright helps his team handle the stress by emphasizing that patients should come first.

“We want to make sure we care for patients and provide information that our frontline clinicians need,” Wright says. “That’s what keeps us motivated and our spirits high. We think about this shortage from a team perspective. Having a team mentality keeps our stress and burnout levels low.”

And that’s important because Wright believes long-term and short-term drug shortages are here to stay.

“We’re trying to be more proactive than reactive,” Wright says. “We have partnerships and relationships with wholesalers and suppliers. We’re trying to get more visibility into what is going on in the supply chain, and especially more upstream in that supply chain. While we're all working toward that goal, we're not there today. But because of the situation we’re in now, when we look into the future, we’re going to have a lot of intelligence and data to overcome future supply chain issues.”