Perspectives

Healthcare Distributors Are the Answer

September 07, 2022

Each day, millions of patients across the country walk into their local pharmacy to pick up their prescription — from complex, breakthrough treatments to routine health and wellness management. But behind this familiar routine is a remarkable process of collaboration within the healthcare supply chain.

Ultimately, how do prescriptions get to the pharmacy counter when patients need them?

Healthcare distributors are the answer.

These efforts serve as the focal point of HDA’s latest video, which spotlights distributors’ tireless work to make sure hospitals, pharmacies, providers and patients have access to critical medicines and healthcare supplies.

Distributors are the logistics experts of healthcare, ensuring the safe, efficient and reliable delivery of 10 million medicines, vaccines and healthcare products daily. By using their expertise, data and relationships across the supply chain, distributors provide a one-stop shop for pharmacies and providers while also ensuring that patients nationwide can get medicines whenever and wherever they need them.

Without distributors, each of the 180,000 pharmacies and providers would have to spend substantial financial, logistical and staff resources to connect directly with thousands of manufacturers to order medicines. Instead, distributors manage and streamline these relationships. By offering these and other services, distributors ultimately save the healthcare system and patients between $33 and $53 billion every year.

Distributors are the backbone of the U.S. healthcare ecosystem. From distributing common treatments to the most complex, answering the call times of calm and crisis, serving the biggest cities to the smallest towns, the distribution industry is ensuring health is delivered.

Click here to watch the full video.