The Application of GSCM in Eliminating Healthcare Waste: Hospital EDC as an Example

Abstract

Eliminating unnecessary healthcare waste in hospitals and providing better healthcare quality are the core issues of green supply chain management (GSCM). Hence, this study used a hospital’s emergency department crowding (EDC) problem to illustrate how to establish an emergency medicine service (EMS) simulation system to obtain a robust parameters setting for solving hospitals’ EDC and waste problems, thereby increasing healthcare quality. Inappropriate resource allocation results in more serious EDC; more serious EDC results in increasing operating costs. Therefore, in the healthcare system, waste includes inappropriate costs and inappropriate resource allocation. The EMS of a medical center in central Taiwan was the object of the study. In this study, the dynamic Taguchi method was used to set the signal factor, noise factor, and control factors to simulate the EMS system to obtain the optimal parameters setting. The performance was set to Emergency Department Work Index (EDWINC) and system time (waiting time and service time) per patient. The signal factor was set to the number of physicians; the noise factor was set to patient arrival rate; the control factors included persuading Triage 4 and Triage 5 outpatients, checkup process, bed occupation rate in the emergency department (ED), and medical checkup sequence for Triage 4 and Triage 5 patients. This study makes two significant contributions. First, the study introduces the GSCM concept to the healthcare setting to bring green innovation to hospitals. Hospital administrators may hence design better GSCM activities to facilitate healthcare processes to provide better healthcare outcomes. Second, the study applied the dynamic Taguchi method to the EMS and neural network (NN) to construct a computational model revealing the cause (factors) and effect (performances) relationship. In addition, the genetic algorithm (GA), a solution method, was used to obtain the optimal parameters setting of the EDC in Taiwan. Hence, after obtaining the solutions, the unnecessary waste in EDC—inappropriate costs and inappropriate resource allocation—is reduced.

The Implications and Effects of Medical Waste on Development of Sustainable Society—A Brief Review of the Literature

“…The problem addressed by the authors is to eliminate medical waste in order to improve the quality of the treatment process of patients and to create a support system of management named green supply chain management (GSCM). This study used a hospital's emergency department crowding (EDC) to illustrate how to establish an emergency medical service (EMS), based on the Taguchi model, creating a simulation system to obtain a concrete parameter for solving hospitals' EDC and waste problems and increasing healthcare quality [24].…”

“…The study presented in [24] makes two significant contributions. First, the study introduces the GSCM, an innovative green concept to healthcare, very useful for hospitals.…”

“…First, the study introduces the GSCM, an innovative green concept to healthcare, very useful for hospitals. Second, the study applied the dynamic Taguchi method to the EMS and neural network (NN) to construct a model revealing the relationship between factors-cause-and performance-effect [24]. Results obtained by researchers show that medical waste is an accumulation of Cu, Cr, Pb, and As in the tested soil samples.…”

Strategic Environmental Practices Model for Green Supply Chain Management Using the Dematel Method

“…Supply chain management (SCM) was conceived as a result of the changes due to this crisis (Montoya-Torres et al, 2021). From end-users to original suppliers, SCM is the integration of important business operations that offer products, services, and information to consumers and other stakeholders (Abdel-basset et al, 2018;Chang et al, 2019). This study used a hospital's emergency department crowding (EDCSorooshian & Panigrahi, 2020).…”

Research Advances on Green Human Resources Management: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis from 2004-2023

“…[26]. Chang et al (2019) opine that green supply chain management can be effective if we eliminate unnecessary healthcare waste in hospitals, improving healthcare quality [27]. Yost et.al.…”