The importance of hospitals using effective supply chain
methods boils down to bottom line profits and improving patient care. According
to Booz Allen, “Supply chains in hospitals can account for as much as 30
percent of total hospital costs.”[1]
Procurement as part of the supply chain comes very expensive when it comes to
hospitals. It seems that there is no direct alignment between savings and the
parties buying supplies for hospitals. According to the Arizona School of
Business, hospitals usually buy the things that doctor’s request, without much
consideration to costs. This is why being able to know where the savings in
every part of the supply chain is important.
IT can be used to effectively manage costs and cut back
where hospitals are using a lot of money. For example, electronic medical
records provide hospitals the ability to cut back on paper use. Electronic
medical records(EMR) are a patient’s health information that can be accessed
anywhere if there is a web connection or internal network connection. It allows
patients the ease of easily switching doctors and even the ease of seeing a
specialist doctor, when not seeing a primary physician. In addition EMR allow
access to health information at anytime and anyplace.
According to Reuters digital health records may save some
money[2]. The
possibilities with EMR are endless. Administrators within hospitals can now see
how many different things the hospitals are treating, who was treating, the
length of time a patients takes to recover, all because the information is
available electronically[3].
It would take long hours to input all of the patient’s information from a piece
of paper to a computer. With EMR, the process is simplified. No more paper
copies of health records that have to be mailed if switching physicians and no
more data loss. Doctor’s will have accurate information about a patient if they
have EMR. Hence, in the long run EMR help save hospitals money and therefore
cutting down on supply chain costs.
What are some ways that IT can help other service areas
besides medicine? Does IT always help trim back on service industry costs? What
about the training costs of implementing IT to reduce the total supply chain
costs?
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