Sustainable Supply Chain Management Practices and Sustainable Performance in Hospitals: A Systematic Review and Integrative Framework

Abstract

Hospital supply chains are responsible for several economic inefficiencies, negative environmental impacts, and social concerns. However, a lack of research on sustainable supply chain management specific to this sector is identified. Existing studies do not analyze supply chain management practices in an integrated and detailed manner, and do not consider all sustainable performance dimensions. To address these gaps, this paper presents a systematic literature review and develops a framework for identifying the supply chain management practices that may contribute to sustainable performance in hospitals. The proposed framework is composed of 12 categories of management practices, which include strategic management and leadership, supplier management, purchasing, warehousing and inventory, transportation and distribution, information and technology, energy, water, food, hospital design, waste, and customer relationship management. On the other side, performance categories include economic, environmental, and social factors. Moreover, illustrative effects of practices on performance are discussed. The novelty of this document lies in its focus on hospital settings, as well as on its comprehensiveness regarding the operationalization of practices and performance dimensions. In addition, a future research agenda is provided, which emphasizes the need for improved research generalizability, empirical validation, integrative addressing, and deeper analysis of relationships between practices and performance.

Enablers to implement sustainable practices in the service only supply chain: a case of an Indian hospital

“…The highest values of R þ C (6.32) and RÀ C (0.77) for "business ethics (E15)" suggest that the enablers are highly influential. Duque-Uribe et al (2019) highlighted the importance of business ethics and commitment of top management in achieving sustainability in the SOSC. The commitment and the business ethics drawn for the stakeholders, society and environment help in adopting new technologies that reduce waste, contamination and energy usage (Mirghafoori et al, 2018).…”

“…Apart from customer relationships, customer involvement and role of customers (Salln€ as and Bj€ orklund, 2020) in achieving sustainability is highlighted by Sigala (2014). Achieving sustainability in a system required the participation from all the stakeholders; thus maintaining relationships with a sustainable supplier can also prove to be an effective way in achieving sustainability in the SOSC (Aliakbari Nouri et al, 2019a, b;Duque-Uribe et al, 2019).…”

“…The growing world population has kept the health sector under pressure and also affects the sustainability. The interaction between the patient and doctor in healthcare is one to one and the way the treatment is carried out generates considerable waste or bio-waste (Duque- Uribe et al, 2019). Many medical treatment items are to be used once; thus they generate a lot of medical waste and are responsible for a large carbon footprint (Zhu et al, 2018).…”

“…Long and non-standard working hour develops psychological stress (Weisz et al, 2011), affects the quality of patient care (Weigl and Schneider, 2017) and increases the chances of occupational accidents (Dilig-Ruiz et al, 2018). Due to a large population and limited development of the health sector in many countries, this sector is put under pressure to serve a large mass, and thus, inadequate health service coverage for access and delivery is globally reported (Duque-Uribe et al, 2019).…”

Sum of the parts: Ensuring a resilient global drug supply chain

“…Internal and external supply-chain factors can lead to shortages and ultimately impact outcomes. 4,12,13 Supply factors drive the supply chain to provide medications to patients while demand factors influence production. There are 2 main types of drug supply-chain uncertainty and risk: internal risks (eg, quality) and external risks (eg, the pandemic).…”