Intro to Managing Healthcare Supply Chain Operations

The Covid-19 pandemic brought about many supply chain challenges including material shortages, labor shortages, and capacity limitations. This highlights the need to understand and effectively manage supply chain operations. In this module we’ll focus on the definition of operations and supply chain management, the continuum of care, and other factors driving healthcare. You’ll explore the key challenges in healthcare supply chains, and examine why healthcare providers need to pay greater attention to these crucial areas of their operations.

In many healthcare organizations, the design and management of operations processes is not clear. As a result, there are many activities done that do not necessarily add value to the process and ultimately hinder effective care delivery. In this module, the idea of process thinking is emphasized. Process thinking is a way of viewing activities in an organization as a collection of processes and that the outcome is a result of the process. To improve outcomes, you have to address the steps in the process.

Quality is an important consideration in healthcare by customers or patients, organizations, and government agencies. It has many dimensions depending on who is defining it. For example, a patient’s experience at a hospital’s waiting room will influence their perception of the quality of care received at that facility. At the same time, if they do not get well after treatment, they may perceive the treatment received and the provider as of low quality. In this module, you will examine the concept of quality and quality management in healthcare.