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Healthcare supply chains are built around traceability and substitutability. A hospital needs to know exactly what it received and needs an alternative when it does not arrive, and both requirements shape how suppliers are chosen.
Devices carry standardised identifiers that follow them from manufacture to use, so a specific batch can be located across an entire health system. Supplying without correct identification is not a labelling problem — it blocks the sale.
Where a product is sterile or temperature-controlled, the record of its conditions is part of the product. An unbroken chain that cannot be evidenced is treated as a broken one.
Prices are set by GPO or system contracts and reconciled through rebates and chargebacks afterwards. The invoice price and the realised price are routinely different numbers, and tracking the gap is its own discipline.
Institutions maintain approved alternatives precisely so a shortage does not become a clinical problem. Being the approved alternative is a real commercial position and it is won before the shortage.