AHA continues to seek tariff exemptions for medical devices

Modern Healthcare – Monday, April 14, 2025
By Lauren Dubinsky

Despite the Trump administration’s recent 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs, hospitals and health systems remain concerned about the ongoing impact of tariffs on medical devices.

Industry organizations including the American Hospital Association continue to push for tariff exemptions for medical devices, but to date, no action has been taken by the administration.

Akin Demehin, vice president of quality and patient safety policy at the association, said the tariffs could affect hospitals’ access to everything from devices used during surgeries to personal protective equipment.

While Demehin said sourcing supplies domestically, nearshore or from countries not affected by the tariffs are potential options to ensure access, he still advocates for exemptions.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What steps are you taking to try to secure tariff exemptions for medical devices?

We sent communication to the administration early on, raising the concerns around the potential impact of tariffs for medical devices. For us, it really comes down to the potential impacts on patient care and on healthcare providers.

We know that there’s been a lot of work to onshore and nearshore production of medical devices to make the industry less prone to disruption in the international supply. That work is ongoing, but in the short term hospitals and health systems still require access to the devices they need to deliver patient care day in and day out.

We know that a significant proportion of those devices come from overseas. We also know that a lot of the protective equipment that healthcare providers need like plastic gloves, masks and respirators are quite dependent on international sources. We surfaced these concerns, and it’s part of the reason why we continue to advocate for exemptions.

How receptive have policymakers been to the call for these exemptions? The situation around care has continued to evolve. There was the recent announcement of the temporary pause on the higher reciprocal tariffs that the administration had planned.

That was certainly welcome news and gives us some short-term certainty in terms of what the tariff situation is going to look like as we continue to build toward a longer-range policy approach. We are continuing to review the information we have, as we know it, about the current tariff plan.

Do you have any estimates on how much the tariffs would increase the cost of medical devices?

I don’t have hard data in front of me. Some of the complexity in answering that question stems from how supply chains get built and how much reserve capacity may be available in the country right now.

We know that hospitals and health systems worked very diligently during both the COVID-19 pandemic and in its aftermath to really bolster their supply chains. So, how quickly the ripple effect hits could look a little bit different from place to place.

How would it affect hospitals if there aren’t exemptions for medical devices and supplies?

Day in and day out, hospitals are using a wide variety of supplies and medical devices to take care of patients. Those can be the most sophisticated medical devices that are used in surgeries or in the delivery of chemotherapy, or it could include the smaller stuff like needles, syringes, blood pressure cups or drapes for performing surgical procedures.

From our perspective, the exemptions for medical devices would be really important for minimizing disruption to the supply of those instruments.

We remain heavily dependent on international sources for a number of things — at least in the short term, until domestic production capacity is fully developed. These include N95 respirators, surgical masks and plastic gloves.

If exemptions are not granted, how can providers adapt to mitigate the impact of tariffs?

Hospitals and health systems are very adaptable organizations. We’ve seen the extent to which they showed their resiliency in delivering patient care under the most challenging of circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A lot of complex decision-making will take place as facilities look at their supply chains and figure out where to source things that may have been disrupted by the tariffs. That process will be ongoing, depending on what the tariffs look like over the long term.

It may mean going to particular countries for these kinds of materials — sources they may not have used in the past. In the long term, it could potentially involve trying to turn to more domestic manufacturing, wherever it’s available. It will depend on exactly how much reserve supplies are is in the country and what their use rates are.

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