Ever wonder why your manufacturer rep sometimes is unaware you are affected by a recall?

This one puzzles many folks, but it happens quite often.

A recall coordinator at a hospital receives a letter from a manufacturer saying the hospital is affected by a recall.

The coordinator is puzzled… she remembers talking with the manufacturer’s rep a few days earlier, and the recall was not mentioned at all. She reaches out to the rep and he reiterates he is unaware of her organization being affected by any recall.

This baffles the coordinator who now must determine which is true? Surely, if the manufacturer is alerting the hospital of the recall, their sales rep would be aware. Right? Not always.

As we all know, in healthcare supply chain things aren’t always as straightforward as we would expect them to be.

Suppliers typically have different departments dealing with Sales on one end and Post-Market Communications on the other. Frequently this means that the rep gets involved only after their account replies to the manufacturer indicating they have affected product on hand.  Only then, does the sales rep become involved in the return and credit process.

This causes situations where recall coordinators are frustrated because it seems the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. In addition, it takes further fact-finding for the recall coordinator to determine whether they are affected by the recall or not.  When it comes to alerting health systems about recalls, there should be no confusion about whether an organization is impacted or not.

This confusion isn’t intended, but for the recall coordinator, the miscommunication on the supplier side is unacceptable and causes unnecessary work to manage a manufacturer quality problem.

The solution is simple and boils down to data and how it is handled.

The supplier’s post-market team looks at a recall from the perspective of where affected product was shipped to- or “ship-to locations. The supplier sales team and the provider recall coordinators just want to know if the organization they support is impacted. Technology can be leveraged to translate locations to organizations in real-time and allow for everyone to get the data they need. With one source of data, easily accessible, there will be no more confusion.

NotiSphere's recall management software solves these challenges by allowing manufacturers, distributors, and providers to exchange medical recall information in real-time, eliminating confusion and allowing for full transparency.

This article was first published by Power Supply. You can find the original pdf for download here.

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