Question

Discuss aspects of the various supply chain elements that brought the knowledge, evidence, and treatment plan together at the point of care and how far back can you trace it. Comment on what it means that most of the supply chain elements you discuss are likely to be outside of the organization in which that physician works.

Answer 1

The five main elements of supply chain management are:

1. Plan, strategy on how to manage the various sources

2. Source, for delivering products and services as required

3. Manufacturing, where scheduling of the activities are done for making and testing products

4. Deliver/Distribution, logistics managements done here

5. Return, for receiving damaged or excess products/services that sent back to them from clients

Aspects of the various supply chain elements that brought the knowledge, evidence, and treatment plan together at the point of care is discussed here. For supply chain management, an organization requires treatment of a proper plan to obtain the demands of clients for the end-products and services from the organization. Here for manufacturing the end-products, organizations require a cautious mind while selecting suppliers for distributing the products and services. Based on the evidence, necessary decisions have to be taken. Also, knowledge is a robust method for retrieving benefits in an organization. If organization knowledge is effectively used, it will benefit in supply chains. If a product is in transit, tracing can be done for calculating the present and past information such as location etc. For that, a proper plan is required by assessing the knowledge and evidence based on organization and product.

Hospital supply chain management consists of getting resources, management of supplies and distribution of products and services to patients. Many stakeholders come into play for completing the process. So it is a complex task. A physician and hospital can reduce the substantial cost of supply chain management of healthcare organization. However, independent stakeholders such as medicine and types of equipment makers, insurance organizations, group purchasing companies, and many regulatory agencies conduct the supply chain operations outside the organization.