Positioning Hospital Supply Chains

As Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs) continue to acquire more hospitals and post-acute care providers, it’s clear that supply chains are getting larger and more complex – increasing risk for waste and inefficiency. 

Below are three common challenges supply chain leaders face and three innovative steps we can take to begin addressing – and solving – these problems head on, without sacrificing quality of care.

Step 1: Identify and address the areas in your supply chain where money is being wasted – and those areas where the supply chain can add financial value.

Here are some common questions that can help identify supply chain problems that create unnecessary costs for providers:

• Do you have sufficient visibility into your supply chain (across all facilities) to allow you to reduce or eliminate waste by minimizing unused, expired, recalled, or obsolete products?
• Are you losing money by missing opportunities for charge capture?
• Do you have the right business intelligence to optimize inventory levels?
• Do you have too much inventory on hand for “just in case” procedures but not enough of the right products on hand when clinicians need them?

Step 2: Develop a clear vision for a future without those supply chain problems – complete with objectives, budgetary needs, and projected ROI.

When multiple teams and departments are competing for the scarce resources of time, executive attention, and budget dollars, the ability to clearly articulate a powerful vision of the future is critical to successfully challenging – and changing – the supply chain status quo.

The vision will likely look different for each IDN, but each supply chain leader’s plan should paint a clear picture of what a sustainable operating program would look like once you’ve addressed:

• Waste elimination
• Stock outs
• The need for clinicians to spend time tracking down products
• The projected bottom-line benefits of ensuring charge capture and end-to-end visibility for every single product
• Whether or not your hospital information systems ‘speak’ to each other, to give you an accurate view of supply chain needs and opportunities, system wide
• Whether or not your current processes result in workarounds or undesired and counterproductive behaviors from clinicians, nurses, and materials management staff, potentially taking time away from patient care

This vision should also clearly articulate the return on investment the proposed changes will have not just for the IDN overall, but also for key stakeholders – including nurses, physicians, procedural leads, supply chain managers, finance, and IT teams. Their support will be critical to implementing and executing your strategic vision.

Step 3: Explore methodologies to bring your supply chain vision to life:

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Seek out proven strategies that been successful at other IDNs and hospitals. Each IDN’s supply chain action plan may look different, but the most successful ones are likely to incorporate proven best practices that have worked at other facilities. 

Second, immediately begin exploring connected technology solutions that can help bring your vision to life. Tomorrow’s supply chains require tools that enable automated data capture and advanced analytics that provide the kind of actionable – and time- and resource-saving – insights that allow hospital leaders to make smarter, more informed decisions that can reduce the total cost of care.

Third, don’t go at it alone. Even the best, most experienced supply chain leaders have only 24 hours in a day. Trying to single-handedly juggle the day-to-day job responsibilities of managing an IDN supply chain while also trying to transform it? That usually proves to be an impossible task. Alleviate the burden – and make the process easier and more dynamic – by engaging with experts who can guide the process.

Jean-Claude Saghbini is the general manager of inventory management solutions at Cardinal Health.