MODELLING AND ANALYSIS OF HEALTH CARE SUPPLY SYSTEM IN EMERGENCY SITUATIONS

Abstract

In today’s era, the healthcare supply chain, compared to the supply chain of other products, is amongst the most valuable and crucial supply chain. It has a direct effect on the quality of life of people, therefore, proper planning and commitment are required from any healthcare organization for its better management. The aim of the healthcare supply chain system is to deliver right healthcare products and services in the right quantity, in the right cost, in the right condition, in right place, and in the right time to the patients who need them. When it comes to the emergency situations the pressure builds up on the health care organization, where life of individual depends on response time i.e. how good treatment he receives during Golden Hour i.e. the right first hour for need of medical treatment. However, in the context of India, due to the large population and varied demographic patterns, it becomes difficult for the government healthcare organizations to fulfil the demand and deliver healthcare products and services at a timely manner to the patients. From the field survey and literature review, it was observed that a large number of stock outs was observed in hospitals and at various levels of the supply chain in India, which is one of the primary reasons for the poor performance of healthcare supply chain system. Hence, based on the above discussions, the objective of this study is to identify and analyses the issues related to inventory management within the healthcare supply chain. To do so, first, an overview of the current scenario of the healthcare supply chain has been discussed. Then using systems dynamics technique, the entire supply chain has been modelled and simulated. As a part of systems dynamics, a causal loop diagram (CLD) is made which shows all the stages of the supply chain of the entire hospital system. The factors such as lead time, frequency of patients, demand fulfilment loop has been considered for making causal loop diagram. The CLD is then translated into a stock-flow diagram (SFD) for the total supply chain on Stella® platform. In addition, an improved model has been discussed to help the decision-makers in better management of inventory. Next, seventeen issues that control the demand during emergency situations, supply, movement of drugs and other essential items in the hospital, have been analysed using interpretive structural modelling (ISM). The analysis results reveal that the improved systems model has a positive effect to reduce stock-outs as well as inventory carrying cost. The results also reveal that factors like density and average age of population (F1), accessibility to other hospitals (F2), pollution in environment (F4), season change (F5), and physician prescription (F16) have high driving and low dependence power during emergency situations. These factors are the key factors or success factors for achieving end results and are very important from the management point of view.