Life is known for having its ups and downs just as industry ducks and weaves as it spars with fads, opportunities and threats. Healthcare is no exception.

As part of Healthcare Purchasing News’ ongoing 30th Anniversary celebration, we surveyed readers and researched our own content to identify the biggest threats to supply chain management that actually happened and those that didn’t, as well as the hottest fads (some of which have lasted for decades or still continue, believe it or not).

Here’s what our readers and our pages reported over the years.

Real threats

1. Insurance companies wield cost control over healthcare industry

2. DRGs and the prospective payment system put materials managers’ performance in the spotlight

3. Physician preference item expenses

4. GPOs weaken materials management’s authority and influence

5. Consolidation and “supersizing” of GPOs in the 1990s

6. Mergers and acquisitions among distributors in the 1990s

7. Universal, then standard, precautions against blood-borne pathogens leads to glove stock shortage

8. Needlestick safety rules requires acquisition of higher-priced sharps safety devices

9. Pricing confidentiality clauses in contractual language brought to light by the MedAssets/Aspen-Guidant lawsuit

10. Distributors, manufacturers, GPOs and electronic commerce companies battle with providers over ownership of purchasing data

Fake threats

1. The Carter Administration’s hospital cost-containment program

2. The “Voluntary Effort to Contain Costs,” the industry’s response to the Carter Administration’s hospital cost-containment program

3. American Hospital Supply’s merger with HCA

4. GPOs threaten to render materials management obsolete

5. GPOs nullify the need for distributors

6. Distributors nullify the need for GPOs

7. Outsourcing materials management operations

8. Outsourcing sterile processing operations

9. Common Category Database leads to commoditization and easy comparisons of products

10. IDNs will consolidate materials management positions

11. The Clinton Administration’s healthcare reform initiative

12. Low-temperature gas plasma sterilization methods would supplant ethylene oxide

13. Y2K’s impact on the supply chain

14. Internet-based electronic commerce redefining materials management

15. Online electronic commerce to replace EDI

16. Online electronic commerce to replace GPOs

17. Online electronic commerce to replace distributors

18. Congress shuts down GPOs

19. SARS in the U.S. and its effect on the supply chain

20. Avian/pandemic flu’s impact on the supply chain

Hottest fads

1. EHCR

2. Self-contracting/distributing IDNs

3. Activity-based costing

4. Automated supply cabinets

5. Reverse auctions

6. Bar coding

7. RFID

8. Lean management

9. Six Sigma

10. Value analysis

11. TQM/CQI

12. Just-In-Time/Stockless distribution

13. Cooperatives

14. Data synchronization

15. Warehousing (off-site and on-site)

16. Clinical/critical pathways

17. Capitated agreements/capitated purchasing

18. Risk-sharing agreements

19. Disintermediation

20. Stockpiling

21. Committed volume/compliance

22. Reprocessing/reusing single-use devices

23. Benchmarking

24. Third-party reprocessing

25. Online electronic commerce exchanges

26. Cherry picking GPO contracts

27. Sole-source/dual-source contracting

28. ERP vs. MMIS

29. Bariatric products

30. Third-party logistics