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Cincinnati Children’s joins 10 other leading pediatric hospitals and Phlow Corp. to form coalition to deliver essential medicines to address drug shortages

Thursday, March 18, 2021

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center today joins in announcing the launch of a groundbreaking Children’s Hospital Coalition: Powered by PhlowTM (CHC). This first-in-kind coalition brings together some of the top children’s hospitals across the nation, in collaboration with Phlow Corp., to provide certainty in availability and access for key medicines necessary to sustain life and conquer disease.

“As members of the coalition, we will help tackle issues surrounding essential medicine shortages and the drug supply chain,” said Steve Davis, MD, MMM, chief operating officer of Cincinnati Children’s. “I am looking forward to this major collaboration and the results it will produce not only at our medical center but also at children’s hospitals everywhere.”

Shortages of essential medicines for children are a persistent problem for hospitals across the United States, according to the coalition. A 2019 survey of 330 U.S. hospitals, including 29 pediatric hospitals, demonstrated that medicine shortages disproportionately and uniquely impact children’s hospitals. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed further vulnerabilities in the overall U.S. hospital supply chain, particularly regarding essential injectable medications. To address this issue, the CHC is charged with a mission to deliver on the promise of ensuring a reliable supply of high-quality, affordable essential medicines to treat children.

“The care of America’s children is unnecessarily impacted by essential medicine shortages, which often leads to compromised patient care, clinician frustration, and increased hospital pharmacy costs and inefficiencies,” said Eric Edwards, MD, PhD, co-founder, president, and CEO of Phlow. “By empowering an innovative and unique coalition of the top children’s hospitals in the country, we will be able to work with visionary leaders to solve this chronic and vexing problem.”

Currently, in addition to Cincinnati Children’s, the founding hospital members of the CHC are: Arkansas Children’s, Boston Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, Children’s National, Children’s Wisconsin, Cook Children’s, Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital, Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and Nationwide Children’s.

The coalition is working together to further escalate this issue on the national agenda, to encourage children’s hospitals to join in this cause, and to educate other hospitals on how this coalition will aid in ending shortages of essential medicines. Ultimately, the goal of the CHC is to increase the resiliency and reliability of the pediatric pharmaceutical supply chain.

“Short supply of high-quality essential medicines is a problem that children’s hospitals face across the country,” said David Mayhaus, PharmD, MS, vice president of patient services for Cincinnati Children’s. “The CHC will work to help ensure the reliable and affordable supply of high-quality essential medicines. The program will aggregate demand and provide opportunities to collaborate with top children’s hospitals across the nation. I am excited to contribute to this initiative and watch its work benefit pediatric care.”

Cincinnati Children’s is collaborating with other hospitals to identify and prioritize the most needed essential medicines, including sterile injectable medicines and medications used to treat pediatric cancers and rare diseases.

Phlow will work quickly to ensure a high-quality, reliable supply of these essential medicines and will provide transparent, cost-plus pricing for all coalition members under uniform long-term purchasing agreements. Through this collaboration, the CHC will work toward improving the delivery of pediatric care.

The founding members of the CHC, including Phlow, recognize that essential medicine supply is a critical problem nationwide and welcome new children’s hospital members to join in this bold initiative. Please visit www.childrenshospitalcoalition.com for more information on how to join the CHC.