A performance evaluation framework of public health distribution network for essential medicines: lessons from the select Indian states

Abstract

The present work has been carried out to develop a performance evaluation framework of distribution network design in public health with specific reference to essential medicines based on six different types of public health distribution networks (PHDNs) prevalent across six Indian states. We evaluated the performance of PHDNs on the criteria of cost and service and also on the sub-criteria of cost and service by following the analytic hierarchy process. We utilized the pairwise comparison method in determining the relative importance of criteria and sub-criteria by seeking responses from several experts and subsequently evaluated the PHDNs on all sub-criteria in a 7-point Likert scale by seeking views from the same experts. Finally, we developed the "cost-service matrix," in which cost and service have been depicted in the horizontal and vertical axes, respectively. We demonstrated the performance of six PHDNs in this matrix in terms of cost and service by plotting scores obtained by them on cost and service, respectively. The findings of the study provide rich insights to the policy planners of public health.

An Examination of Inter-State Variation in Utilization of Healthcare Services, Associated Financial Burden and Inequality: Evidence from Nationally Representative Survey in India

“…The low availability of free drugs and diagnostic tests and irregular supply of essential drugs at public health care facilities compel households to buy them from open markets, which raises health care expenditure. 19,113,114 The situation varies across states with Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, and Delhi providing medicine for free and ensuring greater availability than other states. 19 Also, Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana has saved up to US$23 million of citizens’ money on drugs during 2020 to 2021 by providing quality generic medicine at affordable prices.…”

Two‐stage distributionally robust optimization model for a pharmaceutical cold supply chain network design problem

“…Dalalah and Alkhaledi (2023) studied the problem of blood inventory with stochastic demand. The above summary shows that although many articles in recent years have begun to focus on PSCND problems, including some articles studying SCND for vaccines (De Boeck et al., 2020; Petroianu et al., 2021; Lim et al., 2022), blood products (Mara et al., 2021; Ozkan, 2023), or essential medicines (Kumar and Das, 2023), there have been few studies on the problem of cold SCND for a variety of drugs that require low‐temperature storage. Therefore, this paper considers the design of cold chain networks for a variety of pharmaceutical products that require low‐temperature storage and transportation.…”

Performance Evaluation of Omni-Channel Distribution Network Configurations considering Green and Transparent Criteria under Uncertainty

“…Distribution networks that use this concept efficiently have a positive impact not only on costs related to the supply chain but also on customer experience. Therefore, in order to select an efficient distribution network, supply chain managers need to evaluate the performance of network-related configurations in terms of common criteria such as costs and services [11,12]. Although there are different methods for performance evaluation, DEA is one of the most widely used methods for evaluation in supply chain management [13,14].…”