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National events : Operations Management in the Health Care Supply Chain - Health Article

The article entitled: "National events : Operations Management in the Health Care Supply Chain" is in the Health Articles section of Operations Management Papers area...

ARTICLE DESCRIPTION: The Institute was delighted to see 30 delegates at the very first IOM event specifically focused on the Healthcare Sector. The IOM has established a Health Special Interest Group to enable people involved in operations management in the health sector to share experiences and leading practice.

MORE INFO: National events : Operations Management in the Health Care Supply Chain The Institute was delighted to see 30 delegates at the very first IOM event specifically focused on the Healthcare Sector. The IOM has established a Health Special Interest Group to enable people involved in operations management in the health sector to share experiences and leading practice. Chris Granville, Head of Business Design at BUPA welcomed everyone to their headquarters, provided an excellent lunch and outlined the future direction of BUPA in the context of the significant challenge presented by the NHS is to reduce waiting times, a key reason customers turn to BUPA. His message - BUPA has to significantly improve its operational effectiveness to survive. Peter Aston, Vice Chairman, explained why the IOM is seeking to get involved in the Healthcare sector, outlining our offering and suggesting that although good practice is beginning to be adopted in the NHS, it is only a start and it could very easily falter. Of the 160 Acute NHS Trusts that Peter had reviewed, only 50 had Operations Directors on the Trust Board, so the concept of Operations Management is obviously poorly formed. The first Case Study was presented by Natalie Douglas, Director and Karen Jessop, Supply Chain Manager of IDIS Pharma. Natalie described IDIS as one of the foremost providers of medicines to Healthcare organisations on a named patient basis. Karen described the challenges of launching new medicines to the marketplace; phasing out medicines when patients or doctors still want them and when medicines are demanded in new markets. IDIS’s whole raison d’etre was described as achieving the impossible despite the challenges of regulations, paperwork and geographical boundaries. What became very clear was that Karen had robust and straightforward supply chain tools that appears easier to use than the compex ERP systems. We then moved onto the world of Generics UK who is a leading generic pharmaceutical manufacturer and distributor, one of 15 companies in the Merck Generics Group that operates in 150 countries and employs 27,000 people worldwide. Perry Downs, Operations Director described how when he joined the company it was rapidly losing its profitable market position through poor operations practice. With the help of Ian Ashley of Unipart Solutions Practice, it became clear that the lean practices are only effective if the people who have to use them really change their day by day working practices. Perry and Ian detailed how they had taught the ‘doing teams’ inside Generics to work differently, using the lean techniques as integral parts of each person’s working day. Perry outlined the impact on Generics ‘bottom line’, key measures such as ‘first pick’ availability and how such improvements had fed through directly to the businesses improving profitability. Coffee was served and, judging by the general clamour and difficulty in getting people back to their seats, it was clear that many issues had been raised that people wanted to talk about. The third presentation was literally from the sharp end of the NHS, as Amanda Hollands, Service Improvement Manager from Hinchingbrooke NHS Trust, explained to us how lean techniques had been applied to a new purpose built elective care theatre block at the hospital. Hinchingbrooke had recognised that 2 kinds of operations took place in the ‘old’ theatres: straightforward, planned procedures and unplanned emergency or exploratory theatre procedures. So, using industry based approaches, they defined and separated the 2 work teams, designed the elective care theatre block accordingly and applied BOM techniques to each procedure. They scheduled the patients, their operations and the right resources and materials using specified equipment, materials and resources. The impact is likely to allow them to more easily meet the challenges of the forthcoming ‘tariff’ regimes in the NHS, whereby Primary Care Trust’s will commission work from hospitals at nationally set tariff values. The more effectively the hospital completes the work in comparison to the given tariff the more ‘profit’ the hospital can earn. Amanda explained that the new theatre was due to open the week following her presentation; there were gasps from the audience at her composure just days her project going live!! The final presentation was from Paul Hendrick and Sylvia Adams of BUPA, who explained one of the operations improvement projects that were being undertaken in BUPA in response to the challenge that Chris Granville had outlined in his introduction to the event. BUPA had identified that each of its 36 hospitals stocked and ordered its own consumables – gloves, dressings, prosthetics, etc, etc. There clearly was an opportunity to improve by bringing together the stocking and buying activities, supplying each hospital on a daily basis from 3 regional distribution centres. Although this sounded a very straightforward exercise, Paul and Sylvia described the many detailed challenges that arose – the deployment of the Supply Chain managers at each hospital, the nervousness of each hospital of not having stock, the feeling of losing control and the preferences of each hospital or surgeon. The audience felt this project was familiar territory, asking challenging questions to the presenters, who patiently explained the approach taken. They demonstrated how easy it is to think that industry solutions can simply be applied to healthcare. They cannot, the culture is very different, and the business motives to change are not the same. The ‘doers’ in the healthcare sector focus on different areas – eliminating MRSA, dirty wards, waiting lists to name just a few. They struggle to see that operations management can clear the decks of much of the day to day fire-fighting. So, the IOM should work to get the message across to this group. The event was very well received with 90% of participants rating the presentation as either good or excellent. So, the first event was very successful, to be followed by many more… Peter Aston, FIOM

PUBLISHER: Institute of Operations Management

Page number: 14 Word count: 950

Vol 31 - No 07 - November/December 2005

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