An investigation into some current supply chain practices at a private healthcare provider in Gauteng

M.Comm.Much has been done and developed both in theory and practice in terms of advancing the science of logistics since its early days as an area of management focus. Great leaps have been made alone in the past decade regarding the integration of logistics into the broader management philosophies and to subsequently define the now widely referred to concept of integrated supply chain management. Although many industries have embraced this concept and spearheaded initiatives in this field, many traditionally established companies and industry sectors have yet to embed and operationalise its concepts more fully and to reap the potential rewards. The healthcare industry has been under pressure – amidst increasing competition, supplier costs and patient’s increasing awareness to seek improved value for treatment offered – to explore whether opportunities exist to make further savings in terms of its operating cost and total cost profile by taking a different approach to managing the healthcare and service provision supply chain – namely in a more integrated and holistic manner. In the healthcare context, the supply chain includes, amongst others, the capability and ability to plan, forecast, source, supply, process, distribute and ultimately deliver and execute all necessary services, goods and information. In order to investigate current supply chain practices at a selected private healthcare provider in Gauteng, an integrated generic supply chain model was defined – for which industry-acknowledged current supply chain practices from the wider domain of supply chain management were identified per component. As primary objective this descriptive research established to what extent a private healthcare provider in Gauteng, as a role player in the wider South African private healthcare industry, has knowledge and understanding of some current supply chain practices, as well as to what extent this private healthcare provider has adopted and applied recognised practices and concepts of integrated supply chain management. This was done using the defined generic supply chain model for a private healthcare provider as the roadmap along which knowledge and application of supply chain practices could be tested for the selected organisation. For this research an interview-based experience survey was used that deployed specific questions in a non-probabilistic sampling manner to respondents across the functional management chain, to measure both the level of assumed or explicitly attributed knowledge of supply chain practices in relation to the companies’ ability for the application, implementation and utilisation of these industry best-practices as pertaining to supply chain management, as seen in the context of the selected private healthcare’s competitive operations in the Southern African healthcare industry. The output of the analysis to determine the primary research objective was subsequently plotted on a supply chain evolution matrix postulated as part of this study