A supply chain is beneficial for both the manufacturer and the consumer in the sense that products are taken from creation to delivery via marketing networks. In healthcare, manufacturers are health care organizations, the product is the improved health while as consumers are patients. Unlike the ordinary principle of supply and demand, health care cannot be stocked. For this reason, the supply chain management in healthcare is very different as there are unique challenges and dynamic changes. Improving health care is challenging and so it becomes expensive to satisfy the patient’s needs. Strategies to reduce these costs, improve performance and include data into health practices require supply chain management. As such, this paper seeks to establish the benefits of supply chain management in health care.
Supply chain administration is experiencing various industry trends that include cost reduction, consolidation, supplier model changes, and decision making. Today, the numbers of standalone hospitals have greatly reduced. They have merged to form a large portfolio of non-acute sites that have proved difficult to manage and oversee operations. Besides, the government has been cutting healthcare expenditures of the national hospitals. Health administers are therefore necessitated in seeking supply chain management to reduce avoidable health costs. Moreover, there is the pressure of traditional distribution and suppler model. Although there are efforts of expanding services in the healthcare logistics network, healthcare providers are considering the traditional hospital-supplier relations. Even so, it has been pointed out by researchers that the traditional model isn’t the only model being utilized by the hospitals. Data and technology are playing major roles in the supply chain approach. A survey by 2018 Global Healthcare Exchange revealed that data and analytics were the prime areas under focus for improvement ( LaPointe, 2019) . For these reasons, the primary focus of monitoring supply network is to improve the quality of health care with better delivery models.
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Manufacturing businesses regard the process of obtaining goods to consumers as the supply chain ( Fredendall, 2016) . Yet, so many businesses depend on manufacturers. Simply, supply chain necessitates a mutual interaction with consumers and providers to deliver buyer value at minimal charges to the broad supply chain. The healthcare supply chain begins with the medical product manufacturer who focuses on production and distribution of goods. Inventory is then purchased to initiate a procuring deal with the company as a representative of the hospital. Next, medical products are distributed in the healthcare organization which then allows the stocking of inventory for patients and patients. Consequently, the health organization assures patients of the availability of potential life-saving tools.
Irrespective of nature of the business, planning is crucial for lasting success. Part of this is contributed by integration, meaning that everyone attached to a business activity should work together. Healthcare supply chain management is related to its operational clinical integration. For many years, healthcare has been divided on a supply-side where practitioners are found and the buy-side with the acute care providers. However, stakeholders in healthcare have made progress in a clinically integrated supply chain that has been possible by involving sophisticated offerings, enabling price negotiation and altering reimbursement policies ( Martyn, 2019) . Components in integration include alignment and connectivity. Alignment incorporates the shared goals within the supply chain responsible for reducing costs and improving health care. Connectivity involves the data and physical streams between the methods of logistics network and the nodes of the supply chain like inventory.
References
Fredendall, L. D., & Hill, E. (2016). Basics of supply chain management . CRC Press.
LaPointe, J. (2019). Exploring the Role of Supply Chain Management in Healthcare. Retrieved 30 September 2019, from https://revcycleintelligence.com/news/exploring-the-role-of-supply-chain-management-in-healthcare
Martyn, P. (2019). Driving The Clinically Integrated Healthcare Supply Chain. Retrieved 30 September 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmartyn/2017/10/16/driving-the-clinically-integrated-supply-chain-in-healthcare/#32f90c557a50
