The Challenges of Hospital Supply Chain Management, from Central Stores to Nursing Units

The practice of patient care is supported by a range of healthcare supply chain management activities, also referred to by many as healthcare logistics. Improving the efficiency of these activities can provide opportunities for healthcare institutions and health systems to increase the quality of care and reduce costs. Hospitals represent a key link in the supply chain and face their own particular challenges due the complexity of their internal supply chain. The distribution of medical supplies to nursing units represents a vital component of the internal hospital supply chain. Indeed, all doctors, nurses, and clinical support staff deal with and depend on supplies in one way or another and are thus affected by their accessibility and availability on a daily basis. The methods most often used to distribute supplies to nursing units range from requisition-based systems that depend on clinical staff involvement to methods where the hospital’s central stores manage inventory and replenishment. In the latter category, common storage and distribution method options include par level systems and automated cabinets, among others, as well as the two-bin/kanban replenishment method, which has been identified as a best practice. For its part, RFID technology has further enhanced this leading practice and introduced the possibility of proactively managing supplies by triggering replenishment rounds based on a range of user-defined criteria. Beyond its expanded benefits, this innovation opens the door to a large number of research avenues in the areas of capacitated vehicle routing problems, inventory optimization, and simulation.