PROCUREMENT
Streamlining stock control in non-acute settings
James Minards, Country Sales manager for the UK and Ireland at healthcare business and data automation company, GHX, discusses the use of digital inventory management systems to improve stock control and the procurement of a variety of key items used by hospitals and other healthcare facilities, and the time, cost-saving, and efficiency benefits the technology can bring.
Unlike the traditional challenges of winter ‘flu season, the COVID-19 pandemic saw a spike in demand for medical grade PPE that extended to non-acute medical settings as well as traditional hospitals. From GPs’ surgeries and outpatient services through to care homes and vaccination centres, these settings were, at times, short of the protective equipment they needed due to supply issues and supply chain management inefficiencies. In the future, if we are to avoid the PPE shortages which characterised the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, non-acute settings such as the aforementioned need to adopt a supply chain system that puts ease, speed, and efficiency at its core. In recent years, digitalisation has
transformed hospital supply chains to make them more resilient and more efficient in both inventory management and requisitioning. For non-acute settings, this digital approach might provide the answer.
Non-acute settings being overlooked While a lot of attention has been paid to stock levels in frontline settings such as hospitals, some of the same supply chain problems within non-acute settings were initially overlooked. If the UK is to effectively respond to future pandemics, it needs to take seriously the challenges faced by these settings in securing adequate amounts of PPE. Take NHS Community Trusts as just one
example of a non-acute setting; in many cases, these Trusts serve huge populations of people across multiple sites spread over large geographic locations. These three factors contribute to a traditional supply chain model that is cumbersome and ill-equipped to effectively tackle a pandemic response. While hospital supply chains have become much more sophisticated thanks to the use of digital inventory management and data-driven requisitioning, many non-acute settings still rely on manual material orders and inventory updates.
GHX says that while hospital supply chains have become much more sophisticated thanks to the use of digital inventory management and data-driven requisitioning, many non-acute settings still rely on manual material orders and inventory updates.
Decentralised nature of manual processes The decentralised nature of these manual processes, where a care home in one town would handle its own procurement independently of a GP surgery in the next town, leads to an inability by the central Trust to gain proper visibility of stock levels and inefficient budget control. While these are problems in normal times, they can lead to critical emergency stock shortages during a crisis. Added to these issues is the demand for increased PPE for vaccination centres, many of which are not in traditional medical settings. PPE is no longer the preserve of acute hospital environments, yet many non- acute settings have been overlooked in the move to digitalise procurement to avoid shortages. So, how can non-acute settings improve their supply chain resilience to improve their response to future crises?
Digitalising our healthcare sector Implementing a similar digital system to those found in hospitals into non-acute settings is both simple and accessible. Systems can be ‘bolted on’ to existing
IT assets and infrastructure using web- based applications, which allows any digital transformation to be seamlessly integrated with existing ERP systems across a diverse range of non-acute settings. This approach could be invaluable to Community Trusts with multiple sites across a large geographic area, and also financially efficient; the ability to use existing IT assets means that there would be no requirement for expensive investment in new hardware. The technology can be integrated seamlessly without any detrimental impact on other frontline services, which is particularly invaluable to services operating in a non-traditional medical setting such as the vaccination service at
March 2022 Health Estate Journal 47
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