The Transformative Power of Supply Chain Management as a Shared Service: Building a Partnership with Nutrition and Food Services
Tremendous value can be achieved by investing Supply Chain Management (SCM) resources into shared services where optimizing the supply chain is not normally a top priority. This paper will discuss an example where SCM partnered with the Nutrition and Food Services (NFS) department within a medical center. The medical center that this project took place in is a large trauma center, associated with an academic health system. The return-on-investment (ROI) was three-fold: 1) improved patient safety and elimination of clinical time spent managing nutrition items, 2) expansion of Materials Management Information Systems (MMIS) to enable the automation of routine transactional work and enhanced reporting, 3) optimization of the supply chain and maximizing vendor partnerships. The project team consisted of 18+ cross functional members with varying degrees of their labor allocated to the project. Results of this project were a true representation of the Association of Health Care Resource & Materials Management’s (AHRMM) (2020) triple aim: cost savings were achieved, resources were re- deployed to improve patient outcomes, and quality of service was enhanced.
Author: Devin Sumaoang