ADDRESSING SUPPLY CHAIN CHALLENGES
Stronger Together: A Collaborative Approach to Solving Canada’s Healthcare Supply Chain Crisis Anne Snowdon, Alexandra Wright, Saba Ghadiri and Cindy Ly
Abstract Canada’s healthcare supply chain faces persistent disruptions, and its fragility has been well documented. This jeopardizes patients’ access to critical care and places significant stress on healthcare professionals, which points to the essential need for a collaborative approach to building relationships, strengthening self-reliance and advancing healthcare supply chain resilience in Canada. This paper documents the design and development of a community of practice (CoP) strategy, bringing together representatives from different sectors, including the private sector, government, health workforce, health system leadership and citizens, to successfully mobilize their diverse expertise and co-design practical solutions to support supply chain resilience in Canada.
Supply Chain in Healthcare
In Canada, healthcare supply chain disruptions remain a persistent challenge, with more than 600 essential medical products reported as being in short supply each week (Goodwin 2021). In 2023, Canada reported 3,098 drug shortages. The average duration of these shortages is approximately 93.5 days (Health Canada 2023). Medical product shortages jeopardize timely access to critical care for patients and place significant stress on healthcare professionals operating in increasingly unstable care environments (Snowdon et al.2024).
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Healthcare Quarterly Vol. 28 No. 1 2025
Healthcare supply chain is a highly complex, multi-stakeholder system spanning from manufacturing to the final delivery of products to health service organizations (Mulcahy and Kareddy 2021). Disruptions in health products negatively impact the quality of care patients receive and lead to profound limitations for healthcare providers to deliver safe and effective care. Unlike traditional supply chains, such as retail and automobile manufacturing that focus on efficiency and lowest cost, the end of the healthcare supply chain is a person’s life (Snowdon et al. 2021, 2022). As such, healthcare supply chain processes must prioritize reliability and resilience to ensure safe continuity of care (Aldrighetti et al. 2019; Golan et al. 2020). Canada’s reliance on globally sourced health products, coupled with its vast geography and relatively small, dispersed population, renders it particularly vulnerable to global supply disruptions. This vulnerability underscores the urgency of a “Canada First” strategy to advance and strengthen supply chain resilience – emphasizing domestic capacity, diversified sourcing and robust preparedness to anticipate, absorb and recover from disruptions and maintain the continuity of care (Health Canada 2024; Tukamuhabwa et al. 2015). Recent shifting geopolitical relationships have further incentivized the need for a “Canada First” approach to strengthen self-reliance and health supply chain resilience in Canada.