Healthcare Supply Chain ManagementSupply chain management plays a vital role in our hospitals today. With the increasing cost of healthcare and new technologies, it is essential that hospitals operate as efficiently as possible without compromising care. For the materials manager and for the financial minds of a hospital, the field of supply chain is a tedious task at best, the kind of planning, strategizing and measuring that is rarely recognized and rewarded. The work involved in inventory control closely fits this description. In many hospitals today, it is easy for inventory control to slip and get out of control. This is the case with the I Care health system. Too many people with too much access to too many product supplies control supplies and equipment entering facilities with no regulation and little oversight. Although the responsibility for excessive orders is often attributed to nurses, famous for selling off invisible and already paid for inventory, they are not the only culprits. Specifically, when it comes to inventory, it is the system that is failing a hospital, not its employees, on what is essentially an asset management issue. Currently, I Care Healthcare System uses an in-house developed mainframe with an outdated materials management system that allows you to generate purchase orders, but it lacks running reports that track usage. This is not uncommon in the hospital equipment management environment. The process I primarily manual involves generating department requests, sending them to purchasing, a purchase order is then generated and faxed or called to the manufacturer or Med/Surg distributor. Although the distributor has the ability to go through the middle of the paper, make sure they honor their agreement. Second, in the case of pharmacies, it allows the establishment to be reimbursed for pharmaceutical products that were not available from the contracted supplier. This is important for the pharmacy because when they have to look elsewhere for a substitute product for which they do not have a contract, they could spend much more on that product. Ultimately, it is a low-cost solution for monitoring the supply chain, reducing costs, and finding opportunities, whether contractual or not. References “The Role of Group Purchasing Organizations in the American health care system,” Muse & Associates, March 2000. Werner, Curt. "Hospital supply chain scores high marks in response to SARS outbreak" Healthcare Purchasing news, July 2003. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BPC/is_7_27/ai_105642714:retrieved 10-11-09