Healthcare supply chain, pharmacy costs to rise in 2025: report

Dive Brief:

• Health supply chain costs and pharmaceutical expenses are projected to rise modestly between July 2025 and June 2026, according to new research from healthcare services company Vizient.
• Pharmacy spend will rise 3.8%, driven in part by increased demand for specialty medications. AbbVie’s autoimmune disease drug Humira will continue to be the most popular drug by total spend, however popular GLP-1s like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro are projected to enter the top-10 list of medications by total spend.
• Supply chain costs will rise by approximately 2% during the period, following higher prices for raw materials, increased freight and shipping costs and tariffs on medical-surgical products, according to the report.

Dive Insight:

Providers are growing increasingly concerned about rising pharmaceutical and supply chain costs in 2025, experts told Healthcare Dive last month. The Vizient report adds fuel to those fears, showing slight upticks in spending to come this summer.

Increased demand for specialty and personalized drugs will drive a portion of increased pharmaceutical spend, according to the report. The high-cost drugs account for 54% of total drug spending nationwide already, and spending is projected to increase as more drugs are brought to market or are marked up due to inflation.

The number of specialty and complex medications on the market is predicted to increase by 4.4% during the period.

An increase in the availability and prescriptions of glucagon-like peptide-1 medications — or GLP-1s — will also contribute to rising pharmaceutical costs, according to the report. 

Currently, 1 in 8 American adults say they use GLP-1s, and total spending on the medications climbed to $57.5 billion for the first three quarters of 2024. Globally, that figure could reach $150 billion by early 2030 as utilization increases, according to Vizient.

However, the main driver of specialty pharmaceutical cost will come from price increases to classic specialty drugs that treat oncology conditions and autoimmune disorders, Steven Lucio, senior principal of insights and intelligence at Vizient, told Healthcare Dive in January.

During the study time period, Humira, Stelara and Skyrizi — which all can treat Crohn’s disease — are projected to have the largest price increases.

The healthcare industry will also see cost increases related to supply chain pressures, according to Vizient.

The Biden administration approved an $18 billion increase in tariffs in May, for example, that will impact the healthcare industry’s import of enteral syringes from China, according to the report. The syringes are used to deliver fluids to the body and are critical to a wide array of healthcare services.

While healthcare providers successfully lobbied for the tariff to be deferred until 2026, providers will need to diversify their supply chains away from Chinese suppliers to limit the impact of the tariff, Vizient said. 

Tariffs on certain face masks and medical and surgical gloves also increased at the beginning of this year, according to the report.

Additional tariffs from the Trump administration could cause even higher spikes in supply chain costs. On Saturday, Trump said he will increase tariffs on imports coming from Canada, China and Mexico — a move that could cause the price of medical devices like X-ray equipment to rise.

Providers have begun to address market jitters about rising supply chain costs.

During HCA Healthcare’s recent investor call to discuss its fourth quarter earnings, executives discussed steps HCA had taken to bolster supply chain resiliency.

CFO Mike Marks said the company had been diversifying its supply chain for years ahead of possible tariffs and had locked in fixed price contracts for 2025 to mitigate their impact.