How Supply Chain Expertise Can Enhance OR Efficiency

Hospitals and clinicians in the U.S. are under tremendous pressure to deliver more efficient, higher quality care to a growing, aging, and chronically ill population. With 143 million additional surgical procedures needed each year to save lives and prevent disability (according to the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery), providers are looking for ways to enhance OR efficiency and maximize patient outcomes and satisfaction.

One area in particular that health systems are taking a closer look at when it comes to efficiency and outcomes is the hospital’s supply chain. It’s the second largest and fastest-growing expense for providers. It’s also very complex — it’s not just about ordering supplies. An efficiently functioning supply chain ensures proper equipment, devices, and other items are where they need to be, when they need to be there. 

Supply chain has an acute impact on all areas of the hospital, especially critical patient-care areas such as the OR. Inefficiencies can slow down OR decision making, increase costs, and ultimately impact the delivery of patient care. Supply chain challenges generally fall into three categories:

1. Ineffective Transactions leading to an unreliable product supply, uneconomical ordering processes, and inaccurate prices.
2. Inefficient Inventory leading to high inventory holding costs, too many SKUs, and a high rate of expired product.
3. Inflexible Operations leading to limited low cost channel options, decentralized purchasing driving surgical variation, and lack of supply chain insights needed to manage complexities.

A high-functioning supply chain can have tremendous benefits on the OR. For instance, an effective supply chain can ensure the right product gets to the right place at the right time, making surgeries more cost-effective and leading to more consistent patient outcomes due to decreased surgical variability. This also leads to fewer delays in the OR, allowing staff to spend more time focused on patient care and less time behind the scenes ordering and managing supplies.

The Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies have collaborated with leading health systems across the U.S. to help them address their needs related to delivering value-based care. As it relates to supply chain operations, Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies leverage their capabilities to help health systems optimize inventory, reduce costs and ensure that surgical products arrive at the right facility, at the right price, at the right time, in the right condition.

By improving supply chain operations for Johnson &Johnson Medical Devices Companies’ products, health systems can witness numerous potential impacts including improved price accuracy, increased efficiency, and alignment of industry data standards. As part of a recent engagement with a leading health care system, Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies helped convert a manual, time-intensive ordering process to an electronic invoice system, removing order processing costs of approximately $440,000 a year.

For top health systems across the U.S., Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies have utilized a variety of techniques to help streamline process flows, enhance inventory efficiency and reduce stock-outs. By identifying opportunities to improve the flow of Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies’ products, establishing metrics and analyzing current processes, health systems have witnessed significant impact in areas like order automation, excess inventory, stock-outs and overall cost savings. 

As Senior Director, Supply Chain customer solutionsfor Johnson & Johnson, Ruben is responsible for development and deployment of Supply Chain Customer Solutions to improve the customer experience with the top tier Medical Devices hospital customers in the U.S.