HEALTHCARE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Prof. V. Vidhya

Assistant Professor

Department of MBA

Sankara College of Science and Commerce

The Supply Chain Management is about delivering goods and services from manufactures to the customers. It generally refers to the resources needed to deliver the goods and services. In Healthcare, managing the supply chain is very difficult and complex process. Healthcare supply chain involves managing resources and supplies and delivering goods and services to the Healthcare Providers and Patients. For this process to complete the information’s about the medical products and services should go through number of stakeholders, like Manufactures, Hospitals, Providers, Insurance companies and Regulatory agencies.

The healthcare supply chain is initiated at the clinical product manufacturer where the products are produced and it is in turn send to the distribution centre. The hospitals can purchase the products either through directly to the manufacturer or to the distributor, or else they can purchase through group purchasing organisations which has contract with the manufacturer on behalf of the hospital.

Medical products are sent to the healthcare providers where it is stocked in the inventory for patients. The Providers ensures that they are not left without essential medical products and patients have access to the lifesaving products.

Healthcare supply chain management also involves the participation of some regulatory agencies which determines that the medical resource is fit for the consumer use and the providers will be reimbursed for using the resources on necessary patients.

The Healthcare supply chain is important for business as it helps to reduce costs, increases supply chain efficiency, create strong agility and resilience. The hospital caters many people for that they need proper stocks of all products starting from syringes, medicines, PPE and other specialised drugs. The industry has greater responsibility to have proper stocking of all essential requirements and as well as to manage their inventory. They cannot dump in their inventory with the items and products which will expire soon.

Several risk factors are there that challenges the functioning of healthcare supply chains,

• Lack of resilience – The pandemic situation exposed the need of good supply chain resiliency. The risk of supply chain disruptions in healthcare have greater consequences for the patient care.
• Lack of visibility – Lack of resiliency is due to the poor visibility of the healthcare supply chain. Specifically due to lack of quick access, real time data on inventory and less knowledge on future demands.
• Cost management – In the pandemic situation the demand for PPE and other medical supplies went up high and the costs also geared up high. This led to delayed procedures with high inventory and carrying costs.

Conclusion

The current scenario the need for AI enabled supply chain control towers can help an organisation to gain greater visibility, can improve the ability to sense the demand and will support inventory management for the improved patient care. Combining all these factors the healthcare ecosystem can better manage future crisis and challenges.