Insufficient funding for healthcare and the difficult economic situation of most hospitals force them to seek sources of all possible savings. Such a powerful and often overlooked source is the expenditure on implementing logistics processes related to the flow of drugs and medical materials. According to data from European hospitals, these can exceed even 15% of a hospital’s budget.
This manual presents guidelines for reengineering selected hospital processes and implementing IT solutions that support the effective functioning of these processes. The proposed approach assumes the creation of a heterogeneous IT system based on existing IT applications used in the hospital. The primary goal of the reengineering is to implement effective logistics process solutions using e-business technologies, which will improve the efficiency of managing the flow of drugs and medical materials and enable the registration of material costs for medical procedures. Knowledge of these costs is crucial for hospital management in a market economy. Furthermore, it will better prepare the hospital to create offers for the National Health Fund and enable it to properly plan its activities within the allocated funds. This manual was developed based on experience gained during the implementation of a project at the WSS in Wrocław.
The pilot implementation covered the following segments of hospital activity:
• Central Pharmacy
• Surgery
• Operating Block
• Anesthesiology
The primary goal of the guidelines formulated in this manual is the effective implementation of logistics solutions in hospitals, using e-business technologies, which will contribute to improving the management of the flow of drugs, medical materials, and patients, and will enable the registration of material costs for medical procedures.
The proposed approach was designed based on the following assumptions:
• mapping the flow processes of drugs and medical materials, as well as their optimization and integration with patient movement, allows for the elimination of all unnecessary or repetitive activities that do not add value and are a source of unnecessary costs.
• introducing an automatic data collection system (the so-called ADC system – Automatic Data Capture) based on barcodes, for registering the consumption of drugs and medical materials and for monitoring patient movement, will allow for the automation of a number of administrative tasks, significantly shortening their duration, and introducing full control over dispensed drugs and medical materials.
• applying proven inventory management models, adapted to the demand occurring in the hospital, should, according to data from European hospitals, lead to a reduction in inventory by approx. 15% and thus to an increase in the availability of working capital.
• introducing electronic data interchange (the so-called EDI system – Electronic Data Interchange) with hospital suppliers will enable the automation of the ordering process
• using global GS1 system standards will facilitate and accelerate the implementation process.
The proper functioning of the flow processes of drugs, medical materials, and patients should be monitored by an IT system. The proper functioning of the processes will be supervised through an integration module, built on the principle of a data warehouse, in which data from all hospital IT applications will be collected and analyzed. ADC and EDI systems will be integrated with this module. Additionally, it will be equipped with reporting functions for hospital management and reporting to the National Health Fund.