Product shortages cause an emergency for any business — but for a healthcare facility, they turn an emergency into a disaster.
Every supply chain aims to maintain inventory levels and avoid shortages, but the healthcare supply chain faces extra challenges and higher stakes.
Luckily, focusing on these best practices ensures the reliable delivery of medical supplies, improves a facility’s inventory management, and avoids dangerous stockouts.
Why are healthcare supply chains important?
The healthcare supply chain includes all the steps and resources needed to make, buy, and deliver medical supplies to healthcare providers, from suppliers and manufacturers to distributors and hospitals.
Here are key reasons why maintaining an efficient healthcare supply chain is so important:
- Enhanced patient care: If hospital or clinic staff never have to worry about running out of critical supplies like gloves, syringes, or medications, doctors and nurses can focus solely on their patients. They know they’re always ready to provide the best care possible.
- Cost reduction: When a healthcare provider uses an efficient supply chain system to manage its inventory, it reduces waste and avoids unnecessary stockpiles, lowering spending. Additionally, negotiating better terms with suppliers can secure bulk discounts for competitive materials costs. Less spending on supplies means more funds for facility maintenance and patient care.
- Improved operational efficiency: When inventory management processes are streamlined, staff know exactly where to find supplies in a crisis.
- Regulatory compliance: Integrating compliance checks into supply chain management ensures that every piece of medical equipment, drug, or supply that enters a healthcare organization is automatically checked against regulatory standards. Compliance means all supplies are safe and effective while reducing the risk of fines or penalties.
Main challenges of the healthcare supply chain
Like any industry, managing the healthcare supply chain comes with challenges.
1. Supply shortages
Shortages of medical supplies can happen for several reasons, including increases in demand, production disruptions, and global events. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals faced critical shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) due to simultaneous demand spikes and factory shutdowns.
2. High costs
Some healthcare facilities find it difficult to afford supplies. Small clinics might be unable to keep large stocks of expensive drugs or equipment, leading to financial stress.
3. Complex regulations
Navigating the regulations of medical supply logistics can be challenging. Consider a hospital that imports medical devices from overseas. The devices must comply with both local and international regulations, making the process complicated and increasing the potential for delays or supply chain disruptions.
4. Isolated information
Information that isn’t shared across different parts of an organization, or “silos,” could hinder an operation’s efficiency.
Imagine a hospital where each department manages its own supplies. In the ICU, there might be a surplus of rubber gloves shoved in supply closets and nurses’ stations, while the team in the ER can’t find a single box. Then, the ER might rush to order another shipment while the easiest solution collects dust in another wing of the hospital.
By breaking down data silos and ensuring departments share information, the hospital better tracks inventory and improves decision-making.
5. No standardization of processes
Different departments and facilities may have incompatible processes. If one department uses a manual inventory tracking system while another uses digital tracking, it can lead to discrepancies and confusion when determining inventory levels, resulting in wasted resources and time or errors in reporting.
Imagine that the ER uses a digital system for efficiency while the ICU team prefers a spreadsheet (which is likely how they ended up with a surplus of gloves in the first place). Not having access to inventory data for other teams makes it harder to distribute resources effectively.
How to improve your healthcare supply chain management
Aligning everyone is the first step to streamlining communication and accessing supplies facility-wide. Here are some more healthcare supply chain solutions to improve your inventory management.
1. Implement inventory management systems
At a healthcare facility, inventory management software provides real-time updates on supply levels, alerts staff when something is running low, and automatically reorders items before they run out. As a result, the hospital or clinic supply chain avoids situations where doctors and nurses might find themselves without essential items, such as gauze or surgical masks.
A great inventory management system can also show how inventory is allocated across the facility. When a department runs out of a particular item, it knows exactly which department has resources to share. Even better, the system can track these movements to better distribute inventory where it’s needed.
2. Standardize processes
Consistent processes for ordering, storing, and distributing supplies help minimize errors and improve efficiency. Implementing a uniform system for placing orders and storing supplies, regardless of department, prevents errors that occur when each team follows different procedures.
3. Leverage data analytics
Data helps you identify trends, forecast demand, and make more strategic reordering decisions.
Picture a medical clinic using data analytics to forecast demand for seasonal flu vaccines based on previous years. Using that information to anticipate how many patients will book vaccine appointments lets the clinic optimize the stock of medication needed during flu season.
4. Enhance supplier relationships
Building good relationships with suppliers helps you negotiate better terms, receive superior service, and improve delivery reliability. Having these relationships means you can be more confident that suppliers will help you navigate supply chain disruptions and send timely deliveries.
5. Adopt lean principles
Eliminating waste and unnecessary steps in the supply chain allows a healthcare provider to increase efficiency and save money without compromising patient care.
For instance, by setting up a “just-in-time” inventory system, a hospital supply chain system would order supplies based on usage patterns, reducing excess inventory and freeing up storage space. These changes result in lower supply chain costs, faster delivery times, and a more responsive system, ultimately enhancing patient care.
6. Ensure compliance
Staying up-to-date with legal requirements ensures your medical supplies are safe and effective while avoiding penalties from regulatory bodies.
One great way to stay compliant is to use lot numbers. By recording and managing supplies in batches, healthcare providers can quickly identify and remove compromised products from circulation.
7. Implement barcode tracking
Barcode technology allows you to track inventory in real time, avoiding supply shortages, reducing waste, and improving efficiency.
If a pharmacist is unpacking an order of medications, they can simply scan every container to add it to the pharmacy’s inventory system.
8. Focus on staff training
By educating staff on the latest technologies and industry standards, you empower employees to optimize supply chain operations, identify and resolve issues quickly, and maintain high standards of patient care.
Enhance your healthcare supply chain with Fishbowl
With the right inventory management system, employees don’t need to worry about supply chain emergencies. They can focus on patients while Fishbowl makes sure supplies are always on hand.
Discover how Fishbowl can optimize your healthcare operations and help you achieve operational excellence. Book a demo today.
