SUMMARY
Despite well‐documented evidence of significant competitive advantage and cost reduction resulting from supply chain management (SCM) practices, the healthcare industry has been extremely slow to embrace these practices. This article, through literature review and case studies within the healthcare industry supply chain, explores the barriers to implementation of SCM practices. These barriers include: lack of executive support; misaligned or conflicting incentives; need for data collection and performance measurement; limited education on supply chain; and inconsistent relationships with group purchasing organizations and other supply chain partners. Practical recommendations are made for hospitals and supply chain partners struggling to implement workable SCM solutions.
Short hospitalizations for patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) require continuous nursing evaluation of patients' discharge education. Six institutions collaborated in surveying 300 postoperative patients with CABG to identify learning priorities and patients' perceptions of the effectiveness of discharge education. Data analysis from the self-administered questionnaire demonstrated consistent patient priorities across institutions. Differences in teaching methods and content did not affect perceived preparedness or importance scores. Regional experience demonstrates that variable teaching efforts meet patients' priorities and provide high overall patient preparedness for discharge. Patients with the shortest hospitalizations had higher preparedness scores.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.