How to Manage Clinical Supply Challenges and Bottlenecks

March 2021

In times of crisis, healthcare providers need to swiftly adapt to patient surges and supply shortages, which can strain conventional supply and procurement practices. Healthcare leaders and their organisations need to be able to anticipate and pre-empt problems rather than continuing to react to them.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated supply shortages have led many healthcare leaders and clinic managers to rethink their sourcing practices and their relationships with their suppliers. In this article, we draw upon the lessons learned during the pandemic, as well as the best practices in supply chain management, to help healthcare providers increase their operational resilience from a supply perspective.

Supply and sourcing are highly complex systems and involve many dependencies which hospitals, clinics and allied health providers may have little control over. But even so, there are concrete steps they can take to minimise their chances of being caught out by a supply shortage. Tackling unexpected supply gaps and bottlenecks requires a holistic strategy that considers both the demand-side and supply-side roots of the problem.

1. Forecast and manage demand

To start, one simple and effective step is starting a machinery health assessment. In particular, equipment obsolescence poses a significant risk to operations. An assessment of health encompasses a review of your alarms, logs, equipment and any concerns related to your system. The output of this assessment should identify common issues such as power supply failures and ground faults that, if unaddressed, can often lead to bigger problems later. A health assessment helps to create a prioritized list of recommended Preventative Maintenance actions, so you know where to start and what’s most important.

2. Plan for supply issues and bottlenecks

In times of unexpected demand, even the most robust supply chains can experience bottlenecks. In highly interdependent supply chains like those in Australia and New Zealand, bottlenecks tend to shift up and down the value chain. For example, you may have a surplus of testing kits, but because of a shortage of cotton swabs, your testing capacity could still be constrained.

Getting ahead of supply shortages requires forecasting the next likely bottleneck in your supply network, which requires up-to-date information about the inventory your suppliers have available and their capacity to source new stock, along with your own demand patterns and rates of consumption. Having a historical view of your supplier’s capabilities and visibility into their sourcing processes for specific products can be very helpful in preparing for bottlenecks in surge situations.

3. Move to digital processes

Even as the world moves further into the digital age, the healthcare sector is notorious for its reliance on manual and paper processes. Digitisation is creeping into various hospital departments, clinics and allied healthcare orgs, but it still inconsistent and adoption is slow.

But you do not need to digitise your entire organisation to start seeing the benefits. Removing manual processes from even a few operational functions, like procurement, can be hugely beneficial. Transitioning to digital processes has been shown to reduce errors, deliver significant time savings, and greatly improve organisational agility.

Having a view of live inventory, item tracking and data from devices, equipment and people can help procurement quickly identify any stock losses or shortages and respond quickly to address it. If your supplier is also digitally enabled, the benefits compound over time as you get greater visibility across the supply chain, allowing you to plan sourcing more accurately.

4. Understand your suppliers

Supplier relationships are a key part of your organisation’s ability to secure necessary resources at the right time. Aim to map your key suppliers a few tiers upstream to get a better picture of their strengths and limitations. Healthcare organisations that do this are better placed to respond swiftly to a crisis. That also means you should cultivate relationships in advance with key resources and people in your supply network well before a potential crisis emerges.

Also, give preference to suppliers who can source locally. They tend to be more agile and responsive, and having them on your panel of suppliers will also spread out the risk. Sourcing locally can mean higher capital costs and lower economies of scale, but lower transportation costs, faster turnaround times and local support may offset those drawbacks.

5. Foster a culture of collaboration

Developing an effective operational culture is a key element of risk management. Leading by example, senior executives should strive to break down silos between departments. It is important to empower individuals to freely discuss risks while sharing learnings and best practices across department boundaries. This kind of cross-functional collaboration will enable better operational visibility across the organisation, while creating opportunities to share resources and discover supply efficiencies.

Conclusion

Clinical supply chains can be extremely complex to navigate, but partnering with a proven, trusted supplier can remove a great deal of uncertainty from the sourcing process. 

Get in touch with us today to enquire about our curated range of clinical PPE, critical care, consumables, accessories and devices for healthcare providers. Request a sample to discover how Thermo Fisher’s clinical products can help your staff provide the highest level of care to your patients.