Modelling and analysis of healthcare inventory management systems

Abstract

The core competency of the healthcare system is to provide treatment and care to the patient. The prime focus has always been towards appointing specialized physicians, well-trained nurses and medical staffs, well-established infrastructure with advanced medical equipment, and good quality pharmacy items. But, of late, the focus is driven towards management side of healthcare systems which include proper capacity planning, optimal resource allocation, and utilization, effective and efficient inventory management, accurate demand forecasting, proper scheduling, etc. and may be dealt with a number of operations research tools and techniques. In this paper, a Markov decision process inventory model is developed for a hospital pharmacy considering the information of bed occupancy in the hospital. One of the major findings of this research is the significant reduction in the inventory level and total inventory cost of pharmacy items when the demand for the items is considered to be correlated with the number of beds of each type occupied by the patients in the healthcare system. It is observed that around 53.8% of inventory cost is reduced when the bed occupancy state is acute care, 63.9% when it is rehabilitative care, and 55.4% when long-term care. This may help and support the healthcare managers in better functioning of the overall healthcare system.

A collaborative approach to maintaining optimal inventory and mitigating stockout risks during a pandemic: capabilities for enabling health-care supply chain resilience

“…4.1 The effect of a change in perception of uncertainty and risk on collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment practices and optimal medical stock during a pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic introduces new perceptions of uncertainty and risk yet to be addressed by inventory management research outside of cost minimization, profit maximization and overall HCSC optimization (Franco and Alfonso-Lizarazo, 2017;Jabbarzadeh et al, 2019;Saha and Ray, 2019;da Conceição et al, 2020). Consistent with Townsend et al (2018), both industry and scholarly attempts to stretch uncertainty boundaries to cover growing unknowns increase the tendency for risk managers and researchers to conflate uncertainty with risk.…”

“…Most research on managing medical stocks was undertaken outside a pandemic context, and so highlight inventory management techniques that minimize cost, maximize profit, and generally optimize HCSCs through stochastic and periodic reviews, approximation of inventory control via simulation or radio frequency identification (RFID), or vendor-managed inventory (VMI) plans (Franco and Alfonso-Lizarazo, 2017; Jabbarzadeh et al ., 2019; Saha and Ray, 2019; da Conceição et al , 2020). However, in a pandemic context, optimized lean inventory systems are counterintuitive as governments, health-care and relief organizations individually grapple with clogged inventory processes.…”

Statistical characterization of managerial risk factors: a case of state-run hospitals in India

“…The widely researched topics in operations management include trust issues, service quality, operational flexibility, customer relationship management, demand management, inventory management, risk management, waste management, information-exchange related, misinformation, misalignment of interest between patients and companions, among others [ 7 , 8 , 13 , 17 , 20 , 23 , 25 , 36 , 37 , 44 , 49 ]. Furthermore, Kwon et al [ 30 ] provide the strategic areas of healthcare supply chain for improving several aspects of service quality and simultaneously reducing cost.…”

Determining (s, S) Inventory Policy for Healthcare System

“…Managing pharmacy inventories, i.e., medicines and medical supplies, is a major challenge for healthcare decision-makers (Saha & Ray, 2019a). They are generally struggling with the dilemma of having either too much or too little inventory on-hand.…”