Clinically Integrated supply chain — The next frontier in ensuring patient safety

GS1 Australia
By Catherine Koetz, Director – Healthcare, GS1 Australia
Thursday, 01 June, 2023


Clinically Integrated supply chain — The next frontier in ensuring patient safety

Although rarely if ever discussed in the board room, many Australian healthcare organisations are facing a tough decision around how they better manage the products that are stored and used in their facilities. Though many have well-entrenched procurement teams, utilise the expertise of clinical product advisors and certainly have supply services teams on site, the controlled management of products as inventory has been rare.

Why the changing tide?

If recent world events have taught us anything in health care it has been that we can no longer rely on having people available to action things in our hospitals — resources are limited and stretched. Relying on clinical staff to know where things are or using paper-based processes for requisitioning are not the systems needed for the current and future health organisations to operate effectively. Layer over this the increased emphasis on the ability to trace products through to patients — whether consumed or used in treatment — relying on good people who are already under pressure to fill the gaps is a risk.

The changes are foundational

The previous — and current — process for most health organisations has been to buy and expense the products that are used in their facilities. Often internal codes and min/max levels are used in imprest stores to tell them what to order. Vendors have also increasingly been supplying products on consignment where they manage the products, reconciliation and tell the health organisations what they have used. Often these same suppliers keep track of what products have been issued for a specific patient procedure whilst the hospitals are peeling labels to stick on paper to try to track in the patient record.

The most significant change in most healthcare organisations lies in changing the basic elements — starting with managing products as inventory and ensuring visibility of the consignment products on site as they are a financial liability for the organisation. This change aligns with the movement towards ‘Unique Device Identification’ of medical devices, with a rising emphasis on the traceability of medicines and the digitisation of patient records. Just as importantly it aligns with the increased focus on financial management of healthcare organisations and being able to more accurately analyse and manage costs.

The introduction of technology systems and updated processes are starting to ensure that health organisations know what products they have on site. The technology is ensuring they know where products are specifically, how much they are wasting, what their liability is to a particular supplier who provides consignment stock, what stock is going to expire, where products are that have been recalled and most importantly what products have been used to provide care to a patient. With patient care and safety at the forefront of health organisations, these changes to how products are managed provide substantial improvement in these areas.

What is a ‘Clinically Integrated Supply Chain’ and why is it important?

Whilst typically the supply chain in health organisations has been seen as a back-room function, the ability to provide care relies upon an efficiently run value chain, therefore ensuring that the two are effectively linked at the relevant points in the care process is critical.

Viewing the clinical needs of the patient and the value chain as interlinked, interdependent streams of activity helps to deliver the best experience for the patient as it ensures that clinicians have what they need when they need it, but efficiently. This is what is meant by a Clinically Integrated Supply Chain, it becomes part of the important process of delivering care. Making sure that products can be recorded against each patient helps to ensure there is an accurate record of their care and that risks can be managed either during or after their stay for treatment. The same data, though often de-identified, can also be used to manage other aspects that are necessary to ensure high-quality organisations, happy and safe working environments and financial stability for organisations.

Where do organisations start?

It is very much about getting the foundations in place. Technology is key. The ability to ensure unique and unambiguous identification of core elements such as the people (patients and carers), products (consumables, assets, instruments, loans sets, consignment items) and place (storage locations, theatres, wards) within clinical systems and patient records is vital, using global standards is essential to interoperability. Reviewing supply chain systems to ensure that they can also manage products using the same unambiguous unique identification for products and places is critical.

For those embarking upon this journey, there are some great examples around the world. Amongst the core standards from GS1 are the sets of unique identifiers needed as foundational elements. For those familiar with HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) we also recommend CISOM (Clinically Integrated Supply Outcomes Model) as a tool to assist in the process.

Contact GS1 Australia Healthcare team

Image credit: iStock.com/lvcandy

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