27 Apr Adapting to the demands of hospital activity
In my time and experience in managing hospital inventory, and given the current strain and lack of resilience in the supply chain, I do believe it is ever more critical to continually adapt your off-site warehouse and hospital inventory levels to the ever-changing demand of hospital activity on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. This does, of course, lend itself to having a solid digital system and supporting infrastructure that can identify the demand change and facilitate global catalogue changes, amongst other elements, but this is where every business platform must be and quickly work towards.
COVID-19 Pandemic Challenges
The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges, and whilst perhaps the most obvious concern relates to global supply chains and the impact of multiple national lockdowns that continue to slow or even temporarily stop the flow of raw materials, manufacturing and finished goods, there are plenty more challenges our team at Eleanor have taken into consideration.
In the UK, it has been highly publicised that our NHS hospital staff are overstretched and exhausted, having gone above and beyond throughout the pandemic. The concerns are now how an already fatigued team with increasing staff shortages, changes in patient behaviour and record high waiting list numbers are going to cope. Well, one thing is for sure, the patient waiting lists have to reduce, the level of clinical activity must increase over and beyond pre covid business as usual, not forgetting multiple hospital departments have physically moved and/or changed during the pandemic and need reversing, modifying and potentially upscaling to meet the new demand.
Inventory Level Planning
So back to inventory levels.. ! How do you plan for the activity you cannot predict? How do you plan or set inventory levels for ever-changing storerooms? How do you plan for inventory levels for products that are in short to no supply and keep changing ?? It again comes back to catalogue management which includes increasing the number of product and supplier preferences, linking these to master codes that enable each department to store multiple supplier brands of the same product type and changing inventory levels (of the master code) on a daily and weekly basis as the demand fluctuates. It, of course, is never that easy, there are still other factors that must also be taken into consideration, what is the capacity of the storeroom, what is the maximum stock level the area can hold and therefore how many times a week must I scan and restock this department store? There are also some other factors, but the points mentioned are some of the most significant elements.
While this may sound repetitive, your system has to have the capacity to support the new environment, so let’s give you an example of real-life scenarios, thoughts and how it all works…
A hospital Intensive Care Unit is consuming ten cartons of a sodium chloride IV infusion a week, by the end of the week, there is a notable demand shift, and consumption is now at 15 cartons a week. Now you could do nothing and take it that demand is up and down, and let’s wait to see how things change over a few more days or, in most cases, it is reviewed over a month or months. So let’s say we set our weekly levels at ten, but the department can only hold five cartons at any one time; well, then we must ensure we restock the department at least three times a week up to the level of 5 and consider restocking on a Monday, a Wednesday and a Friday to ensure that we keep the area topped up to 5 cartons which on a Friday would mean that they have enough to cover the weekend with a view that three cartons may get used and a buffer of 2 remaining until Monday’s restock arrives.
The post covid world is set to challenge all businesses for years to come, and whilst it’s not easy to maintain your inventory stability and assurance to your hospitals, you have to focus on digital, you have to upscale your operating system resilience, you must review your demand weekly, and you have to remember, long gone are the days of simple PAR inventory management with 1 or 2 factors to consider, there are now up to 10 defining factors you have to know, you have to prepare for and all of which need to form part of your inventory management system and operational infrastructure.
Graham Walsh