The Ailing Healthcare Supply Chain: A Prescription for Change

Abstract

SUMMARY Despite well‐documented evidence of significant competitive advantage and cost reduction resulting from supply chain management (SCM) practices, the healthcare industry has been extremely slow to embrace these practices. This article, through literature review and case studies within the healthcare industry supply chain, explores the barriers to implementation of SCM practices. These barriers include: lack of executive support; misaligned or conflicting incentives; need for data collection and performance measurement; limited education on supply chain; and inconsistent relationships with group purchasing organizations and other supply chain partners. Practical recommendations are made for hospitals and supply chain partners struggling to implement workable SCM solutions.

Characterization of the supply and value chains of Colombian cocoa

“…In this sense, the supply chain structure has a two-fold effect, comprising both cost reduction [9,10] and generation of added value [10].…”

Can locker box logistics enable more human-centric medical supply chains?

“…In addition to the physical flow of supplies within hospitals, there are large quantities of time-sensitive data connected to the material services (Singh 2006 ), much of which are indicators of hospital demand; and, numerous stakeholders such as manufacturers, distributors, GPs, materials management professionals, doctors and other clinicians (McKone-Sweet et al 2005). The large number of stakeholders and vast amounts of data generated by each raises issues regarding the sustainability of the supply chain operation.…”

Boxed up and locked up, safe and tight! Making the case for unattended electronic locker bank logistics for an innovative solution to NHS hospital supplies (UK)

“…Research into demand variance within healthcare has found that hospital orders exhibit considerable variability (Shapiro and Byrnes 1992), affecting supplier's abilities to respond, in some cases impacting on the hospital's ability to deliver quality patient care and treatment (McKone-Sweet et al 2005;Costantino et al 2010). Unclear inventory demand between wards and central procurement / suppliers can create a 'bullwhip' effect ( Figure 1), resulting in a lack of coordination in ordering policies at points throughout the supply chain, creating an increasing demand variance propagating up the chain (Christopher 2011).…”

“…In addition to this, the nature of medical developments within the healthcare supply chain, such as: constantly evolving technologies and short product life cycles; a lack of standardised nomenclature / coding for products due to participation from numerous suppliers worldwide; and a lack of capital to build sophisticated information and communications technology infrastructure are significant barriers to the implementation of more efficient SCM solutions (McKone-Sweet et al 2005). …”

“…The use of integrated ICTs can eliminate paper-based and some manual processes whilst improving the visibility of patients, staff, equipment and data (Anand and Wamba 2013), thereby enabling a greater understanding of demand and supply characteristics within hospitals (Towill and Christopher 2005). Enhanced visibility of hospital supply and demand allows for the potential re-design of outdated hospital processes and supply chain strategies to encourage more efficient operations such as reverse logistics (Ritchie et al 2000;McKone-Sweet et al 2005;Kumar et al 2009). …”