Transformation of the Hospital Supply Chain

Abstract

Increased competition and market dynamics in healthcare have led to a stronger need for a strategy to amend customer relationships and for a clear understanding of how healthcare providers can improve their collaboration with key suppliers. Under the label of ‘supplier relationship management’, more research is conducted to study this phenomenon either on a social system or technical system perspective. In this paper, the author presents a maturity model that links metrics for both ‘worlds’ to prescribe the evolution of key practices, IT-services, and people skills. The proposed model can be used to examine the maturity of supplier relationship management of a particular hospital, identifying performance gaps and systematizing improvement initiatives. When used across a health system, it can be applied to benchmark the performance of the participating members, facilitating new ways for collaborative learning.