Hospitals will soon have to examine their supply chain management with a renewed focus. A clinically integrated supply chain will help medical suppliers and manufacturers assist clinicians with providing better healthcare all around.
A recent study found that hospitals could save more than $25 billion annually by eliminating unnecessary costs in the healthcare supply chains within each hospital. This system ultimately improves care for patients and keeps them safe from harmful drugs or devices.
These medical supplies include clinical inventories such as catheters, stents, and syringes in operating rooms or other procedural areas. Some medical providers rarely take advantage of modern supply chain techniques that can reduce excess and shortages.
Hospitals achieve greater visibility and cost reduction from clinical supplies while also improving safety. Hospitals can take necessary steps to advance a supply chain that is clinically integrated, patient-oriented, and safe for all involved.
Key Takeaways:
- What fields are impacted by integrated health care supply chains.
- How to have a patient-centric clinical supply chain
- Why you should implement a transformation in healthcare with better supply chain management.
The Intricate Network of the Healthcare Supply Chain
Supply management in the medical field is unique and comprises several supply chains, each with specific challenges, such as the high demand for medical supplies from patients that are often at risk to themselves or others due to their condition.
These clinically integrated supply chains impact the following areas of patient care:
- Medical/surgical
- Pharmacy
- Surgical Trays
- Prosthetics
- Medical supplies
For the ultimate benefits, healthcare must eventually administer these matters holistically by working together in a more streamlined and efficient way using the proficiency of inventory directors.
A Patient-Centric Clinically Integrated Supply Chain
By having an integrated supply chain, hospitals and clinics can offer patient-centric care. A healthcare system will fail to improve patient safety if they do not invest in its supply chain.
Patients receive better treatments when physicians procure supplies by moving from a contracts approach to a formulary model approach. Here’s how:
1. Focus on Clinical Outcomes
Providers can shift the focus of their supply chain from maintaining stock to strategies that impact outcomes. The formulary model for authorized suppliers, such as pharmacy benefit managers and prescription drug plan providers, enables them to become deliberate collaborators.
Therefore, products become grouped into functionally comparable categories. Within these groups of classification items, evaluations on efficacy, safety, patient outcomes, and cost-effectiveness determine which to authorize for use based on the particular treatment needs at hand.
2. Incorporate Procedural Transformation
With evolving technology, providers have a chance to rethink how they maintain inventory by incorporating procedural transformation. This new approach will be more sustainable and less expensive.
There are three phases in supply chain transformation:
- Foundational
- Optimization
- Transformational
At the foundational level, there is a priority on departmental materials management.
However, at an optimization level of hospital-wide supply chain strategies, efficiency and collaboration between departments will be increased to introduce new approaches that balance cost controls with patient outcome improvements. These phases represent vast opportunities for introducing new demand planning methods. These phases also reduce waste and excess throughout all levels of medicine.
The transformational phase can only happen when you acknowledge how complicated this problem has become. Therefore, it requires commitment from all hospitals involved.
3. Connect Clinical Systems to Manufacturer Data
In most industries, a company relies on enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain systems to manage inventories with complete histories of obtaining, receiving, status changes in movement, and utilization.
The trouble in healthcare is that an item may be procured by ERP then expensed into clinical departments. There it becomes impossible for any system to trace its history or provide pertinent information about inventory levels.
Physicians find innovative ways to protect patient records while obtaining vital device data by connecting clinical systems to manufacturer data. Clinically integrated supply chains provide the means to do that for medical professionals.
4. Adapt Techniques for Inventory Forecasting
Demand planning is a complex process that uses statistics, historical data, and experience to predict how much inventory you need. Forecasting methods have been used for many years across numerous industries to maximize efficiency by carrying the proper amount of stock at any given time.
These demand-planning tools are essential for any modern organization and provide statistical models that help make calculations more accurate. An automated collaboration capability enables you to get the best possible forecast and safety stock recommendations, providing organizations with the ability to ensure that supply is in line with demand to reduce excess inventories, primarily when used across many facilities.
5. Facilitate Patient Safety, Traceability, and Recall Efficiency
When looking at factors like price transparency or population aging, it becomes clear how essential supply management is. Also, it is essential for hospitals and health care providers to identify what devices are in use if there is a recall.
A recall in more than 18,000 medical devices occurred over the past five years. In case of a device recall, most healthcare facilities will often struggle with identifying which patients may be affected by faulty equipment.
The fundamental goal continues to have a patient-centric supply chain, starting with ensuring the safety of human life. You can create a complete history for a medical device to facilitate patient safety by linking all inventory transactions to that item and its unique identifier (UDI.)
Clinical Supply Chain Management for Healthcare Transformation
Hospitals are facing pressure to control costs and improve the safety of their patients, meaning that hospitals need an overhaul in their supply chain business model as soon as possible.
They must give increased attention to their supply chain strategies, as the need for safety is paramount in today’s health care system.
Are you looking for better ways to make your healthcare supply chain more patient-centric? Contact us today to see how Share Moving Media can help.