Last month, the University of Denver (DU) Hospital Supply Chain Management Training Center, launched in Yangzhou, China, in partnership with North Jiangsu People’s Hospital. The goal of the center is to implement new strategies to build more resilient supply chains throughout China’s healthcare industry.
An article on the training center said, “In its early stages, the first-of-its-kind training center will draw on resources and expertise from DU’s supply chain management program to develop a set of best practices to increase the efficiency of existing supply chains and limit the potentially harmful effects of future disruptions. Beginning with North Jiangsu Hospital, the focus will be on implementing those best practices into ongoing operations and training employees on supply chain management, with the goal of fostering and establishing long-term collaborative efforts on healthcare.”
Jack Buffington, academic director of DU’s supply chain management program was quoted in the article. He said, “In healthcare, we’re increasingly finding the importance of the supply chain in order to enable the clinical care. You can imagine if you go in for a knee surgery, and they’ve scheduled the doctor, they’ve scheduled the nurse. But if the materials aren’t there, they can’t perform the surgery.”
The article also mentions that without the means to put necessary resources in the right place at the right time, the abilities of healthcare professionals are diminished. The COVID-19 pandemic severely effected supply chains, especially healthcare.
Without the means to put the necessary resources in the right place at the right time, the ability of health care professionals to care and provide for their patients is diminished. And when the cause of the supply chain disruptions is worldwide, the impacts are far-reaching.
The article added, “With the need for health care services projected to grow in both the United States and China in the coming years, ensuring that resources are available when and where they are needed is becoming an increasingly complicated task. Existing strategies for predicting, managing and operating health care supply chains are falling short, but with the right planning and expertise, a more robust system can be developed. ‘Supply chains in health care need to evolve,’ Buffington says. ‘We have people with experience in other fields that will help improve how health care supply chains work.’”
The training center, according to the article, plans to expand into more of China’s hospitals in the future.
