Think your closets are full? These Maryland hospitals need room for millions of gloves and gowns

It takes a lot of supplies to treat over a million patients a year in University of Maryland Medical System hospitals, urgent care centers and medical offices.

Think in the millions: 95 million exam gloves, 3.5 million isolation gowns, 3 million masks, 1 million IV fluid bags and almost 8.5 million needles and syringes.

But where to put, and keep good tabs on, all those things needed in system facilities in every corner of the state?

Officials are taking a step done by many Americans with a lot of stuff and more or less renting a jumbo-sized storage locker. The system has signed a lease in Baltimore County’s Tradepoint Atlantic complex and is building a 400,000-square-foot warehouse.

It’s now a dirt lot, but work has begun on the logistics operations center where thousands of unique items will be stored, among a lot of other consumer goods. Neighbors in the Sparrows Point complex will include Amazon, FedEx, Under Armour and Home Depot.

And like those well-oiled operations next door, the new centralized hospital storage facility will “allow us to improve standardization and reduce waste and get the right items to the right places across our system quickly and efficiently,” said Michael Schwartzberg, a system spokesman.

The University of Maryland Medical System is now the largest health care system in the state, responsible for about a quarter of all hospital care. It includes 13 hospitals with 2,450 beds that serve more than 100,000 inpatients annually, plus 1.2 million outpatients and 330,000 emergency room visits.

Officials said they learned a lesson from the coronavirus pandemic, when national supplies of masks and other essential protective gear were in short supply and hospital leaders scrambled for enough of everything. The logistics center will allow them to keep better tabs on inventory, do more to anticipate industry shortages and buy in bulk.

In addition to managing all the routine supplies, the new center will also aid pharmacy operations, allowing officials to, for example, better manage high-cost drug purchasing. Officials may even add laboratories and space to clean and sterilize medical devices in the future.

“Having the right items, in the right place at the right time, is key to providing a safe environment for patient care,” said Pat Vizzard, the system’s vice president of supply chain management.

The warehouse is expected to open in mid-2025.

Meredith Cohn

meredith.cohn@thebaltimorebanner.com

Meredith Cohn is a health and medicine reporter for The Baltimore Banner, covering the latest research, public health developments and other news. She has been covering the beat in Baltimore for more than two decades.

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