Hospital reevaluates supply chain

The Texas Children's Hospital in Houston recently opened its new hospital pavilion for women, which followed an expansion of the hospital's west campus. The new facilities are expected to meet increasing needs and a change in population base, according to Healthcare IT News. As the hospital expanded, Rick McFee, director of supply chain management at Texas Children's, saw an opportunity to streamline the system's supply chain.

"Due to both of those projects as new projects, we had the ability to look at supply chain and how we were managing all that activity," he said to the news source. "It gave us the opportunity to look at new ways of doing that."

McFee saw several factors as key to supply chain management, including IT systems supporting maximum flexibility, managing utilization at the floor level and including nurses on compliance efforts.

In particular, McFee said, it's critical to involve floor workers in tracking the utilization of inventory, since perceptions do not always correspond with reality. He pointed to the example of nurses, who were stocking shelves with 10 to 12 day supplies of some items. After tracking their actual utilization, many items were slashed to a three to five day supply.

Spending recently went down among U.S. healthcare providers, but the easing of pressure on facilities' budgets may be short-lived, according to PhillyBurbs.com. As economic conditions improve, patient volumes may rise, causing providers to again ratchet up spending. However, this current period of diminished spending could be a good time to institute cost savings measures.