Healthcare Supply Chain Management for Healthcare Supply chain management plays a vital role in our hospitals today. With the increasing cost of healthcare and new technologies, it is critical that hospitals operate as efficiently as possible without jeopardizing care. For the materials manager and financial minds of a hospital, the supply chain area is a tedious task at best, the kind of planning, strategy and measurement that is rarely recognized and rewarded. The work involved in inventory control fits this description perfectly. In many hospitals today, it is easy for inventory control to go astray and become uncontrollable. This is the case of the I Care Healthcare System. Too many people with too much access to too many product supplies control the supplies and equipment coming into the facility with little or no regulation. While the blame for excessive orders is often placed on nursing staff, who are notorious for wandering off unnoticed, stockpiles of goods already paid for, they are not the only culprits. More to the point, when it comes to inventory, it is the system that fails a hospital, not its staff, on what is essentially an asset management issue. I Care Healthcare System currently uses an internally developed mainframe with an outdated materials management system that generates purchase orders, but fails to run reports that track usage. This is not uncommon in the hospital materials management environment. The process is primarily manual where requisitions are generated by the department, sent to purchasing, a purchase order is then generated and faxed or called to the manufacturer or Med/Surg distributor. Although the distributor has the ability to verify halfway through the card that he is honoring his agreement. Secondly, in the case of the pharmacy, it allows the reimbursement of drugs not available from the contracting supplier. This is important for the pharmacy, because when it has to look elsewhere for a replacement product for which it does not have a contract, it could spend many times more on that product. Ultimately, it is a cost-effective solution to help monitor your supply chain, reduce costs and look for opportunities, whether contractual or non-contractual. References “The Role of Group Purchasing Organizations in the US Health Care System,” Muse & Associates, March 2000.Werner, Curt. “Hospital Supply Chain Gets High Score in Face of SARS Outbreak” Healthcare Procurement News, July 2003. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BPC/is_7_27/ai_105642714:retrieved 10-11-09