Hospital Medication Reorder Policy under Demand and Supply Uncertainties

• Main Authors: Yi-Ching Liou, 柳亦青
• Other Authors: Mei-Ting Tsai
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/83238933480381778132

碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 高階經理人碩士在職專班 === 105 === It has been decades that the issue of drug shortage affects daily practice in healthcare institutes inevitably. Every step of using alternative medication brings extra cost when any single drug shortage occurs, and the cost is difficult to estimate. In the meanwhile, acute illness patient who needs specific medication treatment often gets into any hospital in an unpredictable pattern. In order to keep the medication could be administrated timely, the hospital has to maintain a certain amount of stock. To do so, the inventory management will become a tough task for the leader of the hospital to balance the clinical need and the financial concern. This study focuses on the policy of replenishment, and intends to find some strategy to deal with the uncertainties of demand and supply. Since it is helpful to assign different policy to different category of drugs, it would be decisive to make appropriate classification. Differ from the common way of ABC analysis which divides items by value, it would be more practical to distinguish items by importance. Five types of indicators are used in this study to do ABC analysis: 1. Mean value of lead time, 2. Standard deviation of lead time, 3. Standard deviation of inventory quantity, 4. Mean value of the changing rate calculated by daily consumption difference from the previous day, 5. Standard deviation of the changing rate. As the categories based on inventory characteristics are established, proper replenishment policy should apply to each specific category according to its characteristics. Probabilistic models considered both uncertainties of demand and supply would be useful to calculate the reorder point, and EOQ model is for the order quantity. This study conducts an empirical example by using data from a medical center located at central Taiwan. The hospital suffered the impact of drug shortage in the last few years. Therefore, since then, the way it has managed medication inventory tends to increase the amount of storage in order to avoid any stock-out occur. However, it is not wise to lift up the stock level unlimitedly. The 57 items that the pharmacy of the hospital considered as must-have in clinical use are included in the study. To search for an effective solution, the study collects actual data of consumption and order from the period of November 2013 to October 2016. The main objective of the study is to figure out an appropriate way to make practical classifications, and to formulate proper replenishment policies respectively. The policies should attend simultaneously to total cost of inventory and patient safety on medication treatment, hence the inventory management improved.