Healthcare Supply Chain Summary

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the article “Controlling Costs in the Healthcare Supply Chain” by Justine Brown. The article will show documented changes towards the Healthcare Supply Chain. It will also take the view of an administrator, or the supply chain leader and give the opinion on how the subject matter contained within the article might have a positive impact upon our healthcare organization. I will expand on the author’s thoughts and give examples and how these examples might come into play within our facility or system.
The article “Controlling Costs in the Healthcare Supply Chain” by Justine Brown talks about the increase in regulation, supply chain inefficiency, and product security have plagued healthcare organizations

Healthcare Logistics is an area where costs can be lowered and efficiency gained in order to save money. A lot of the processes in Healthcare Supply Chain is inefficient creating problems with ordering errors, a lack of products on hand to create patients clinicians receiving incorrect product, and expired inventory. It also creates a lot of rework which lowers productivity and ordering. “Lack of data standardization was the most common obstacle to achieving supply chain excellence” according to the article causing higher costs for the supply chain. “Recently, Becton, Dickinson and Company and Resource Optimization & Innovation (ROi) collaborated on the first known instance in the United States of GS1 standards, including bar codes, being integrated across the medical device supply chain. These standards could help reduce create a more efficient and healthy supply chain potentially saving healthcare organizations a lot time and money. Another big savings towards healthcare supply chain is sending medical equipment to patient’s homes. By sending the equipment to the homes of patients it helps reduce the number of hospital visits which till in turn creating a savings and a potential to generate more

The article talks about how every organization will have to figure out and trim down the supply chain budget because the of the rising costs of healthcare. The article discusses several weaknesses such as regulation, supply chain inefficiency, and product security. If I was the administrator or supply chain manager within a healthcare organization I would definitely insure that I had a plan to deal with regulation, supply chain inefficiencies and product security within my organization. For example, I would ensure that I have a plan to deal with regulation. I would like to outsource some of our supply chain service by using a third party on delivery and transporting some of our sensitive products to ensure compliance with regulations. The next thing I would like to deal with would be the supply chain inefficiencies. I would like to update our system to ensure we are not creating any unexpected expense because of a poor ordering system. I would like to update our ordering system to being totally electronic and have the ability to ensure we have correct on hands to we do continuously order the same products resulting in unnecessary expenses. Finally with the update on our ordering system it will help ensure that we are rotating our merchandise properly to ensure we do not have any expired or defective products. All of these changes would help create a