Hospitals faced widespread shortages of medical-grade masks and other personal protective equipment at the start of the pandemic—a dearth of critical supplies that heightened Covid-19 risks and prompted hospital executives to rethink how they procure PPE.

The stakes were high: Without adequate PPE, healthcare workers are more likely to get sick or even die, leaving far fewer staff to treat patients. But getting more supplies proved difficult after Chinese manufacturers halted the export of PPE as Covid surged domestically.

The solution? Health systems began to take greater control of the supply chain rather than relying solely on foreign suppliers. Two systems, Ochsner Health of the Gulf South and Illinois-based OSF HealthCare, took it a step further by starting their own PPE manufacturing operations.

“We did that, one, to be self-sustaining [and also to] put people to work in the community as well,” said Mike Vermillion, VP of distribution operations at OSF.

Increasing US production. Let’s start at the beginning. In May 2020, 15 health systems joined global purchaser Premier to invest in American manufacturer Prestige Ameritech, which makes face masks and N95 respirators. The health systems—from Baptist Health South Florida to Banner Health based in Phoenix—acquired a minority stake in Prestige Ameritech with the aim of expanding domestic PPE manufacturing capacity.

“We never had a capability that we could lean on,” said Premier President and CEO Michael Alkire, who didn’t disclose the total investment. “We needed [Prestige] to expand production incredibly fast.”

Then Ochsner Health and OSF made their manufacturing moves.

Producing PPE locally. In May 2021, when Covid cases were decreasing (until the Delta variant surged that summer), Ochsner Health announced its partnership with real estate firm Trax Development in a $150 million total deal to create a new Louisiana-based PPE manufacturer called SafeSource Direct. Keep reading here.—MS

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @MikeSchroederIN on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Michael for his number on Signal.

Wintertime means holidays, hot cocoa, and cheesy Hallmark movies (we’re looking at you, Lindsay Lohan). But between family gatherings and snowstorms lurks a seasonal threat: the flu.

The CDC estimates that there can be up to 41 million cases of the flu in the US every year and as many as 710,000 hospitalizations. A 2018 study found the flu costs the US an average of  $11.2 billion annually.

Some healthcare companies like pharmacies and pharmaceutical manufacturers stand to make a nice profit during flu season. But others like insurers and patients are left footing the bill.

Flu shots are “very profitable” for pharmacies. Rite Aid plans to give nearly 3 million flu shots this fiscal year, which ends in February, according to its latest earnings call. Each shot equates to $25 in gross profit for the company (that’s $75 million total if you’re not a math whiz).

“They’re a very profitable vaccination,” Rite Aid EVP and CFO Matt Schroeder said on the call.

Flu meds drive sales growth at pharma companies. Pharmaceutical companies are also seeing an increase in business from “a stronger flu season,” McKesson EVP and CFO Britt Vitalone said in the company’s latest earnings call. The pharma distributor makes money providing flu shots as well as selling flu test kits and cough and cold meds, according to the company.

Health systems can expect patient volumes to pick up. While most people can treat the flu at home, some require more intensive care. Flu-related hospitalizations are rising earlier than expected this year, which could help hospitals—many of which are struggling financially.

“I think the hospitals could benefit,” Tanquilut said. “We’ve seen in the past, especially the more severe flu seasons, where hospital volumes pick up quite significantly.” Keep reading here.—MA, MS

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email [email protected] or DM @MaiaLura on Twitter. For completely confidential conversations, ask Maia for her number on Signal.

As physician burnout reaches “distressing levels,” one common evaluation method—and how leaders approach it—might be exacerbating the problem.

Peer-to-peer comparisons, which occur when physicians are measured against each other on how well they motivated patients to seek preventative care, for example, can actually “decrease job satisfaction and increase burnout,” according to UCLA researchers who conducted a five-month field experiment on UCLA Health staff.

While the comparisons didn’t have a significant effect on job performance, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it did appear to worsen the problem of burnout.

One reason for the “significant negative effect on physician well-being” could be that doctors equated peer comparison with reduced leadership support, said Jana Gallus, coauthor of the study and associate professor of strategy and behavioral decision making at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

Instead of shelving physician comparisons altogether, researchers suggested managers explain the purpose of these evaluations. In an attempt to figure out why these negative effects were happening, UCLA Health leaders were trained to inform physicians that the evaluations were done as a system-wide effort to benefit patients, Gallus said. Based on the study’s findings, adjusting the leadership approach in this way offsets the negative effects of peer comparisons on physician well-being, she said.—MS

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: A Texas teen traveled 60 miles to get an abortion, but the court that heard her judicial-bypass case determined she wasn’t mature enough to make that decision. (ProPublica/the New York Times)

Quote: “Despite the rapid growth of the Ashkenazi Jewish population during the last 700 years, the population became more homogeneous.”—Harry Ostrer, a medical geneticist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, on the first study of skeletons from a Jewish burial ground (the New York Times)

Read: Opioid use slowly killed a group of friends in Greenville, North Carolina—and one of their friends reported the story. (the Washington Post)

Festive: Covid-19 is literally in the air.

Catch up on the top Healthcare Brew stories you may have missed:

• GoodRx co-founder talks biggest challenges
• California law could punish doctors for spreading Covid misinformation
• The latest quarter was a mixed bag of buzzwords for healthcare