Hospital Supply Chain Management process represents the procurement, receipt and distribution of goods, services and capital equipment in the hospital industry. The HSCM deals with the management of materials, manpower like doctors, nurses and other supporting staff, to transform sick patient to healthy person at a reasonable cost, in the shortest possible time and with utmost satisfaction of the patient.
In hospitals the departments like finance, storage, purchase, materials have to work in tandem to increase the performance of the supply chain. In HSCM the purchase department receives, from the sophisticated life saving drugs used by doctors to stapler pins used in the hospital from the vendors and the quality of the each item should be checked and the purchase department manager has to concentrate on right source, right quantity, right quality, right price and right time for continuous supply of all types of medicines required by the hospital. Then these materials are passed to the stores department and it is responsible for performing vital functions like acquisition, receiving, evaluation, warehousing, maintenance, accounting and distributing goods and supplies to all the departments of the hospital.
The supply chain managers in the hospitals should take care that the medicines are stored at the right temperature and at right humidity and the expiry date of the medicines should be checked at regular intervals. The materials or medicines used in the hospitals includes diagnostics, surgical, therapeutic, bedside, service and printing and stationery.
In supply chain process information about an order is completely visible, from supplier to manufacturer to distribution center to transporter to customer and hospitals which have implemented SCM successfully have recorded a 50% inventory reduction, 40% increase in on time delivery.