Effective Healthcare Inventory Management: 5 Elements for Excellent Patient Outcomes

Efficient medical inventory management is crucial for healthcare supply chains, making up more than 37% of total patient care costs. Unlike conventional logistics, healthcare operations ensure the timely delivery of quality medical care.

Creating customized inventory software for hospitals makes the process even more efficient, solving procurement challenges and improving patient outcomes.

In this article, I will outline 5 important practical steps to upgrade inventory management for hospitals and medical facilities, and provide insights into its significance for business growth.

Understanding Healthcare Inventory Management

In healthcare, keeping track of supplies creates the backbone for smooth operations and internal medical facility processes and workflows. It is especially important for large hospital systems managing multiple healthcare facilities, each with its own inventories and workflows.

Typically, the challenges healthcare providers aim to solve with efficient inventory management include:

• consistent and timely restocking;
• excessive use of supplies;
• limited data visibility;
• manual data entry;
• outdated healthcare workflows;
• difficult communication with suppliers.

Tackling the challenges requires healthcare professionals to invest in smarter inventory management as a way to improve the quality of medical care and patient outcomes. Let’s take a closer look at 5 crucial steps necessary to improve the way hospitals and medical facilities handle inventory.

Getting Instant Insights Into Healthcare Storage

Limited knowledge about available medicines and equipment can cause significant problems with managing inventory. As a result, important items may either not be available in emergencies or expire before they need to be used. As a result, healthcare facilities may face financial losses and damage to their reputation.

To address this issue, healthcare facilities should think of establishing real-time visibility into medical inventories. This way, they can get timely updates on consumption and expiration dates and enable consistent and professional medical care.

Here are a few essential features solutions like this usually have:

• Inventory lists: offer a categorized detailed view of medicines and medical equipment.

• Stock overview: provides an integrated view of stock supplies across departments, storerooms, and warehouses.

• Usage tracking: allows procurement specialists to monitor medicine and medical supplies consumption to refill the stock promptly.

• Customized alerts: let inventory managers receive real-time updates on items low in stock or nearing expiration.

Leveraging a Data-Driven Strategy for Consumption and Restocking

Continuous monitoring of inventory lets healthcare organizations assess the utilization of medical supplies and make procurement decisions based on statistical data.

Depending on the goals of a medical facility, the collected data can assist with certain issues such as excessive utilization, cost distribution management, or help build an advanced demand forecasting system.

For further improvement of healthcare inventory management systems, I also recommend implementing custom dashboards and reports. They would be a reliable data source for healthcare executives, lower maintenance costs, and optimize procurement processes.

• Analytics on quantity changes provide a comprehensive overview of the quantity of items used over a specified time period.

• Reports on low-in-stock items help monitor critical item quantities, determine optimal restock frequency and order amounts, and set minimum inventory levels.

• Cost distribution reports offer a perspective on costs associated with inventory items and utilization. This way, business executives can compare planned versus actual spending and facilitate the planning of future inventory budgets.

• Activity monitoring shows a list of activities within specific warehouses, facilities, or departments. It helps see and track typical actions performed by inventory workers and nursing staff over a specific time period, resulting in improved operational and workflow optimization.

Enabling Simplified Communication With Suppliers

Order management is a crucial element in the success of the healthcare supply chain. However, many current inventory management software options for hospitals lack the features needed to automate order placement and tracking.

Even with bulk purchasing contracts common among large healthcare providers, procurement executives still struggle to ensure timely supply delivery.

They face different challenges, like finding the right distributor, confirming product availability, negotiating delivery times, placing orders, and monitoring fulfillment.

If issues arise, communication with vendors, re-ordering, and adjusting prices can take hours.

A built-in module with order management features facilitates communication between inventory specialists and suppliers within healthcare inventory management software.

• A digital list of vendors includes details about current vendors and allows for adding new ones. Smart filters enable inventory managers to quickly assess the best options by checking item availability in specific regions or desired delivery terms.

• Checking order details lets procurement staff easily access information about each order, view expected delivery dates, adjust amounts, and make changes.

• Monitoring order status provides a real-time view of all orders, whether they are saved as drafts, confirmed by suppliers, or fulfilled.

• Automated order placement allows inventory managers to access order data and set minimum inventory levels that will automatically initiate orders for items before they appear low in stock.

Streamlining Workflows Within Healthcare Facilities

Similar to other traditional industries, healthcare is undergoing a digital transformation. Among the different existing challenges, outdated processes, and low digital dexterity play a key role in technology adoption.

Intelligent automation replaces time-consuming manual processes, decreases businesses’ operational costs, and saves hospital staff’s time for quality medical care, improving patient outcomes.

• Implementing barcodes and RFID tags and scanning them with a mobile camera or other device automatically updates information about medical supplies or requests a restock without the need for manual input of numbers and names.

• Simplifying communication between hospital staff and administrative teams improves access to inventory data, facilitates requests for necessary medications, and provides timely updates on available healthcare supplies in stock.

• Transitioning away from spreadsheets and paper records minimizes human errors, standardizes data formats, and makes essential inventory data available for executives and stakeholders all the time.

Ensuring a Consistent Inventory Process

To deliver quality patient care, healthcare organizations often solve individual inventory management issues in conjunction with healthcare supply chains. However, the key to overcoming healthcare inventory management challenges is to establish integrity in inventory processes and workflows.

To create a central point of connection for all the facilities, departments, and employees, consider implementing the following solutions.

• Incorporate cloud enablement into inventory management transformation to give teams access to information whenever needed, facilitate online collaboration, and streamline procurement processes.

• Integrate order management functionality and utilize reporting and analytics tools to save teams' time, keep them informed about the real situation in medical storerooms, prevent critical stockout situations, and reduce utilization costs.

• Choose custom software designed for healthcare facilities to convert records into digital formats, add tools for online collaboration, and help employees overcome digital friction.

Wrapping Up

Effective inventory management in healthcare is vital for providing excellent medical services. When hospital staff and procurement specialists are tied up with manual tasks like updating medication information and placing orders, patient safety is at risk.

Adopting a comprehensive approach to inventory tracking and automating routine facility workflows is the solution to improving any healthcare business. By implementing these measures, organizations can not only enhance operational efficiency but also ensure the well-being of their patients.