Rising pharmaceutical costs are among the most urgent and unsustainable issues hospital supply chain leaders face, according to Scott Caldwell, President and CEO of The Resource Group, Ascension’s group purchasing organization.
Scott recently spoke with Becker’s Hospital Review about the key healthcare supply chain challenges.
“We continue to see aggressive and unwarranted price increases for drugs that are critical to care for patients and where substitutes are not available,” he said. “For hospital supply chain leaders, this paradigm is not only pressing, it is unsustainable.”
Scott said Ascension has been able to mitigate rising costs through the use of e-auctions to increase competition and transparency; a pharmaceutical inventory management system and processes; clinically appropriate auto-substitution programs; and antimicrobial stewardship programs.
He also noted how the supply chain model is built on the concepts of high-quality customer service, hospitality and listening. “Everything we do is with these concepts in mind, and this is where the industry needs to go,” he said.
Click here for the story.
