As Lawton Robert Burns explains so well in the Foreword, “This book provides the first systematic treatment of [the ‘thorny issue’ of managing the supplies that medical professionals such as physicians and nurses order and use in treating patients], covering both external and internal management of the hospital’s supply chain. Appropriate, the book focuses on the managerial processes that need to be managed: sourcing, purchasing, distribution, value analysis, and standardization. The book not only provides a rich conceptual framework for managing these processes, but also supplements the authors’ conceptual work with rich studies of hospitals and health systems that have implemented process improvements in these areas.”
In this volume, Eugene Schneller and Larry Smeltzer carefully organize their material within eight chapters that begin with “Framing the Repositioning Management of the Health Care Supply Chain” and conclude with “Building Supply Chain Leadership and Resources for the Future.” The “book-end” chapter titles because they correctly indicate that (a) Schneller and Smeltzer see all manner of significant insufficiencies in the strategic management of most healthy care supply chains but that (b) what they recommend in this volume should not be viewed as a “silver bullet.” On the contrary, any supply chain must be constantly and rigorously evaluated and, when necessary, re-framed and re-positioned. The focus of their book is on how to do that.
Of special interest and value to many readers are the four “Studies” (e.g. Study 1: The Value of Group Purchasing in the Health Care Supply Chain) which are provided after the final chapter, Chapter 8, in which Schneller and Smeltzer offer their recommendations as to how to develop supply chain leadership and to produce resources for the future within all levels of a given organization. As Schneller and Smeltzer correctly suggest, “progressive health care organizations are characterized by a new generation of managers who understand their organizations through a strategic lens, understand that their organizations are characterized by departments and services with variable clock speeds, and are seeking support systems as they work to become part of a movement by which evidence-based management supports evidence-based medicine.”
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