December 19, 2024 – – The Well being Trade Distributors Affiliation (HIDA) applauded Congress's remaining passage of the Quick Cross laws within the Nationwide Protection Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Yr 2025. The NDAA convention report was authorized by a vote of 281-140 within the Home of Representatives and 85-14 within the Senate. The invoice now goes to President Biden for his signature.
The December 18 passage marks the end result of three years of HIDA legislative advocacy to deal with delays in transport medical merchandise. A HIDA medical provide chain examine discovered that throughout the 2021-2022 West Coast port backlog, roughly 31,000 to 46,000 containers of important medical provides have been delayed a mean of 29 days throughout the transportation system.
The FAST PASS provision within the NDAA Convention Report directs the Comptroller Normal of the USA to conduct a Normal Accountability Workplace (GAO) investigation into the transportation of non-public protecting tools (PPE) between 2020 and 2022.
The GAO investigation will cowl:
- The transport of non-public protecting tools through ships and ports to vehicles or by rail
- Actions by related stakeholders – ship operators, ports, marine terminal operators, rail carriers and motor carriers – to move private protecting tools
- The position the Division of Transportation and different related federal companies play to expedite the transportation of non-public protecting tools
- Effectiveness of present regulatory authorities that enable expedited transportation of non-public protecting tools by related federal companies with out lowering or impacting security
- Methodologies to enhance coordination amongst related federal companies to expedite the transportation of non-public protecting tools
- The doable influence that an expedition of important medical provides had on the transport of different items
- The GAO investigation should be performed inside one 12 months of enactment and reported to Congress inside two years of enactment
Go to HIDA.org.