Healthcare faces extraordinary pressure to offer excellent customer service, handle material, and proper inventory management while working on cost savings. Transport of supplies between sister hospitals or medical centers has become increasingly common to help in improving healthcare services. Many organizations are looking to improve their supply chain for effective coordination and transportation of medical supplies between hospitals. Managing the supply chain is a highly complex and fragmented process in healthcare. The healthcare supply chain management goes through several sectors involving getting resources, delivering goods and services to sister hospitals, and managing supplies.
The physical goods movement involves independent stakeholders, insurance companies, hospitals, manufacturers, providers, and regulatory agencies.
Promoting all these processes can substantially affect the organizations’ budget. Here we look at the complexity of transportation medical resources between sister hospitals. We also cover the various ways to overcome these challenges with reliable medically trained third-party supply chain services.
What is Healthcare Supply Chain Management?
Medical providers use various items that are very delicate. The most common things are prescription drugs, syringes, gloves, papers, pens, and computers. Typically, employees are the ones responsible for the stock of goods and managing the inventory. Managing the supply chain is not simple, and with high customer expectations, employees require more time to take care of their customers.
Healthcare supply chain management starts at the manufacturer, where production begins, and finished products are sent to distribution centers. Depending on the product type, the hospitals will require an inventory directly from the manufacturer or distributor.
The distribution centers will then send the medical products to the healthcare organization, which stocks goods into inventory for patients and providers. To ensure providers are never left without essential medical products and patients have access to potentially life-saving tools, hospitals share these products with other hospitals.
Another aspect of the healthcare supply chain is regulatory agencies like the Federal Drug Administration and Medicare and private health insurance companies. The regulatory agencies determine if all resources are fit for consumer use.
Why is Healthcare Supply Chain Management So Complex?
Healthcare supply chain management is unique as every stakeholder has specific interests to protect. Each stage in the supply chain flow has a different goal that stakeholders want to achieve. Providers also like particular products that are effective for the best services. It is also best to get these products at the most affordable option without compromising quality.
Supply chain goals don’t align with an organization, making most healthcare management processes inefficient and fragmented. Organizations must also focus on the numerous requests and viewpoints to settle product budgets.
Customizations in healthcare are critical. Patients now have a voice about what they need, and organizations should provide them when required. Depending on the health status of the patients, you may need to get unique products such as latex-free gloves.
Any misaligned incentives or independent goals will disrupt the workflow of your healthcare organizations. Overcoming these challenges requires effective collaboration with reliable third-party deliveries for fast and cost-effective deliveries.
Overcome Common Challenges in Healthcare Supply Chain Management With Third-Party Providers
Most healthcare organizations have found success with third-party delivery providers. With an effective supply chain, you can improve the delivery of your healthcare service. Managing these complex supply chains is not easy, but a reliable third-party delivery provider will reduce the complexity and make it more efficient.
Here are some ways you can benefit from using third-party deliveries.
Use Technology and Analytics to Make Operations Run Smoother
Healthcare executives rely on effective technologies to support their supply chain. These require new investments and a team. It may be hard to purchase the new technologies and pay new employees. Third-party delivery providers use technologies supported by solid analytics to make deliveries more practical.
Effective data analytics and automation tools are essential to simplifying supply chain management while giving valuable insights to improve operations. Healthcare organizations require accurate data and effective analytics to transform the supply chain into a strategic business asset. Technological solutions enable you to connect to the everyday process and make all data visible.
With third-party services, you focus more on technology and automation to prevent financial waste and support a transparent and data-driven choice.
Improved Order Accuracy and Order Cycle Times to Lower Costs
Most healthcare providers struggle with large error rates due to the complex ordering and delivery process. When you order the wrong products, it will result in a loss of revenue, and you may not get the right products to deliver expert services. Ordering errors lead to serious medical errors, leading to poor health outcomes.
According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), most errors that affect your orders at the ordering or transcribing stage result in severe inpatient medical errors. Providers need to improve their ordering accuracy to eliminate these risks.
Third-party delivery providers offer accurate deliveries and reduce time wasted when reordering the correct product. They help healthcare organizations have order controls in place to improve supply efficiencies.
Get Effective Inventory Management
Most manufacturers struggle with moving inventory oversupply chains fast. Other medical products require usage almost immediately and may expire after a short while. It will lead to a loss of revenue, and profit margins will be hurt. It is crucial to managing the inventory process effectively to minimize losses.
When an organization lacks a good capital equipment management system, it can add significant losses to cause the underutilization of all existing equipment during ordering. You can achieve this using a reliable third-party delivery provider who understands the process of inventory. They will figure out how to create effective cooperation and maximize productivity.
Collaboration is also effective for successful inventory management. Suppliers and delivery providers will work together to ensure all medical providers get their products and use them before expiry. The potential for costs is also significantly reduced.
Partner With Medi-Ops for Effective Medical Logistics and Transportation Organization
Medi-Ops offers reliable technology for medical logistics to bring a unique and innovative perspective to medical supply chains. Our goal is to revolutionize the industry by improving our team culture of innovation and compassion. We have friendly dispatchers working 24 hours every day with state-of-the-art software and a network of operators to best suit your needs. Contact us today for a consultation.