Transformation is a disruptive undertaking, but the risks and opportunities within the IDN Supply Chain warrant a closer look into a health system’s nextgen supply chain readiness.

Over the past few decades, a perfect storm has been brewing in healthcare. As M&A activity continues, consolidated healthcare systems are serving larger communities, managing bigger spends, and coordinating more complex business operations. It’s more essential than ever to render efficient health services while maintaining—or improving—patient outcomes.

One part of this ongoing complexity is exponential growth in the number of SKUs hospitals must manage. In fact, the number of individual supply items has mushroomed from a few thousand to upwards of 60,000—and that number grows every day.

The problem is that physical hospital space was never set up to handle this volume of product. In addition, clinicians do not typically receive training or education in supply chain best practice, and the negative ramifications on clinician efficiency, patient care, and cost control are becoming increasingly evident.

Determine your organizations’ readiness for supply chain transformation with the IDN Supply Chain Readiness tool.

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It’s an interesting time in the healthcare industry, and for the supply chain specifically. Each of the following market factors is thrusting the supply chain to center stage and calling on all of us to up our game in the face of more complex operations. These factors include:

• The advancement of new technology, from drones and robots to artificial intelligence and distributed ledgers
• Increasing margin pressure
• New and changing traceability regulations
• Numerous mergers and acquisitions

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Each year, Inbound Logistics researches the supply chain challenges of business logistics managers and measures those against the capabilities of technology providers across the industry to develop a list of the Top 100 Logistics IT Providers.

Inbound Logistics’ editors place value on choosing providers whose solutions are central to solving transportation, logistics, and supply chain challenges, and whose customer successes are well-documented.

TECSYS is honored to once again be included in this prestigious list, selected for its supply chain platform which is designed to flex to the demands of highly-regulated healthcare logistics ecosystems, omni-channel complex distribution landscapes, and tightly-run 3PL operations alike. As supply chains are gaining their foothold as strategic assets and competitive differentiators in increasingly globalized economies, we, as providers, should not underestimate how the data we synthesize is used to support informed decision-making that drives business performance objectives.

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Information technologies have evolved and so have the expectations of the business community. Do you remember when the main objective was automation? Now organizations who continue to view their supply chain applications as transactional engines are missing huge opportunities. Supply chain applications must provide a competitive edge by offering differentiation, depth of functionality, adaptability and robust analytics. The supply chain is also continuously evolving; its evolution leads us to the value chain.

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The recent Becker’s Hospital Review Annual meeting in Chicago was invigorating and thought-provoking, with many presentations from CEOs of many leading healthcare systems. I wanted to share an overview of three breakout sessions that spoke specifically to Healthcare Supply Chain.

Can’t Deliver Care Without Stuff: Emerging Strategies for Supply Chain Management was a discussion with Brent Johnson, VP Supply Chain and Chief Procurement Officer at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, UT. Brent comes from outside the healthcare industry. When he came into healthcare supply chain at Intermountain he was shocked at how, as an industry, healthcare managed its supply chain so casually, because “you know, outside healthcare, supply chain is seen as STRATEGIC to the organizational performance.”

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In my July post, I introduced the ‘Hierarchy of Supply Chain Metrics’, which is a framework of supply chain metrics conceived by Gartner, the world’s leading information research and advisory company.  The model provides 3 tiers of integrated metrics to assess, diagnose, and correct supply chain performance, and is a great example of what constititutes a supply chain scorecard.

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It has been said that you can’t manage what you can’t measure.  In the world of analytics, this is our daily mantra.  However, as succinct as the statement may be, you can’t help wondering if it is missing something —  a little something called perspective.

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