Healthcare Supply Chain Management
Key to Profitability
The healthcare industry is comprised of hospitals, HME/DME companies, urgent care clinics, primary care practices, medical labs and pharmaceutical companies. The industry as a whole utilizes a vast amount of supplies, equipment and medications to serve patients. Since effectively managing the healthcare supply chain is critical to profitability, healthcare executives must seize on the opportunity to effectively optimize their supply chain management (SCM).
Sage Growth Partners’ (SGP) recently conducted a survey of 100 healthcare C-suite and supply chain leaders. The survey found that healthcare CEOs’ chief concern has shifted in recent years from driving revenue in 2017 to cutting costs in 2018. The survey results point out that that supply chain costs will begin to surpass labor costs by 2020, so healthcare executives can “no longer afford to ignore opportunities to optimize supply chain management (SCM).” The vast majority of executives agree that improved supply chain management can improve care quality and reduce costs and waste.
The eye-opening results reveal that “tightening control over and identifying waste in the supply chain management function could help hospital and health system leaders reduce their supply expenses by an average of 17.7% or $11 million annually per hospital.” Historically, hospital leaders have viewed managing their supply chain as an expense, along with IT, versus as a strategic action to increase profitability. The survey results indicate that this mindset has shifted with 98% of the respondents saying that supply chain management (SCM) is now a moderate to high priority.
The survey also revealed that close to half of healthcare organizations use unsophisticated systems, including spreadsheets, to manage inventory, supply expenses, and other supply chain management (SCM) responsibilities. This is a surprising finding since supply chain management is a priority to many healthcare executives.
TRXio: Inventory Management for the Healthcare Industry
TRXio is a simple-to-use healthcare inventory management solution that offers an item-level traceability aspect that most other solutions lack. TRXio has the ability to track the movement of an individual item from its origin to the end of its useful life, providing valuable data on who comes into contact with the item along the way.
TRXio allows healthcare organizations to:
Improve visibility into the healthcare supply chain through real-time reporting.
Track the movement of valuable assets, including computers, medical devices, lab equipment, supplies, etc.
Trace pharmaceuticals through their entire lifecycle by lot number and expiration dates
Prevent counterfeit pharmaceuticals from ever entering the supply chain
Monitor employee supply usage
Increase employee accountability
Manage the quantity of medical supplies to avoid shortages
Track surgical devices to avoid the spread of disease
Use UDI (unique device identification) labeling capabilities and clearly defining staging locations for cleaning and storing.
Handle sensitive medical or specialized use with our HIPAA compliant servers and platform.
TRXio is the ideal solution for healthcare supply chain management. For more information on how TRXio can be used to improve inventory management for healthcare organizations, please contact us at 844-868-7225