Abstract
This chapter attempts to expand the knowledge in healthcare supply chain by analyzing the impact of implementation of supply chain practices on the overall performance of organizations in healthcare industry through a systematic literature review. The study also develops an integrated healthcare supply chain framework by linking digital technologies and supply chain practices. This framework will act as a tool and add value to organizations in healthcare industry by specifically providing them with supply chain strategies to achieve improved organizational performance with digital technologies as enablers. The framework will attract special significance in view of the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic situation in which the healthcare sector has played a very vital and major role. It will also be helpful in improving healthcare systems in all types of countries, which is the need of the hour. A systematic analysis of published literature is adopted as the methodology to conduct this research.
TopIntroduction
The Covid-19 pandemic situation has severely impacted many sectors in the world. The healthcare sector too got influence due to this pandemic. But, at the same time, it is one of the sectors which contributed to the economies of every country and supported the infected people. Healthcare sector employees and all the other stakeholders related to this sector have been providing their services at different levels during this pandemic with utmost commitment levels. Supply chain management has been playing an important role in the distribution, delivery and availability of medicines and vaccines through the world. At the same time, barring Covid19 related activity, there has been an increase in the overall costs in healthcare sector for every patient. This is causing an alarming situation in this sector. Both hospitals and the governments in respective countries have been making efforts to provide best healthcare service by improving their overall organizational performance by optimizing the costs. However, the healthcare organizations, especially the hospitals, face plenty of challenges in achieving this objective due to severe competition, increasing equipment and material costs. Implementation of Supply Chain Management (herein after called as SCM) strategies and supply chain practices (herein after called as SCPs) is found to improve the overall performance of healthcare sector organizations by streamlining the processes to improve the overall patient satisfaction. However, in spite of developments in SCM and innovative SCPs in general, there has been a lukewarm response by the healthcare sector in actively implementing them to achieve the positive outcomes. One of the major reason for this is attributed to the lack of awareness about SCM and lack of visualization of tangible benefits by the healthcare practitioners. This is more prevalent in developing and under-developed countries. To some extent, the developed countries and countries with good healthcare infrastructure have been able to take advantage of SCM and SCPs. However, in order to leverage from SCPs, it is essential that healthcare sector across the world should be strengthened and their systems and processes are redesigned, especially to sustain the pandemic situations successfully. Therefore, this chapter explores the SCPs, investigates their influence on organizational performance of healthcare sector organizations and finally develops an integrated framework.
Today’s competitive and dynamic business environment has been making businesses, especially the organizations in healthcare sector to face many issues and challenges. Most of these challenges revolve around optimization of their operations and at the same enhancing the customer / patient satisfaction. In order for these companies to sustain and be competitive, it is highly essential for the top management and the strategic leadership to understand and recognize the importance of implementing practices related to supply chain. This would ensure the individual organizational improvement and at the same time it would also enable the overall growth of all the partners in healthcare sector.
In spite of its advancements and impact on the performance of organizations in many other sectors, implementation of SCM and SCPs in healthcare sector appears to be little unfocused and lacking clarity among its members, especially the suppliers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and diagnostic labs. There is an immediate need to orient all the stakeholders of this sector on SCM and SCPs, provide them training and create awareness about implementation of digital technologies to achieve the objectives of optimization and improving customer satisfaction. This comes at a crucial juncture where healthcare organizations have to face additional challenges due to the Covid19 pandemic situation. Healthcare sector organizations need to realize that mutual coordination, trust and integration of processes within the healthcare supply chain to improve the optimization and efficiency. This will ensure the smooth flow of information across this chain. Implementation of digital technologies plays a vital role to achieve this kind of coordination through quick and appropriate information sharing (Gorane and Ravikant, 2016).
Based on the above discussion, the purpose of this chapter is to,
Key Terms in this Chapter
Supply Chain Management: It is the process of integrating the activities of all the members of supply chain such as suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and customers to achieve the overall objectives of improving the product and service availability to enhance the customer satisfaction.
Supply Chain Practices: A set of practices involved in managing the activities related to sourcing, procuring, producing and distributing in a network of business organizations.
Supply Chain-Related Organizational Performance: The performance achieved by an organization through the implementation of supply chain practices, generally measurable in terms of financial indicators.
Healthcare Supply Chain: A network of different entities of business organizations such as suppliers, hospitals, diagnostic centers, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, distributors, dealers and retailers working together to provide enhanced service to the patient.
Supply Chain Integration: A process of integrating all the activities and processes involved in the supply, procurement, manufacturing, distribution and selling functions of different group of organizations through mutual cooperation and coordination by sharing information.
Digital Technologies: A set of technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, block-chain technologies, machine learning, internet-of-things, robotics and wearable devices used for accumulating, storing, analyzing the data to provide better results and output to the users.