Background: Governments in many countries are looking at ways to provide efficient and effective health services as health resources dwindle and the burden of poverty and illness increase. Provision of drugs and contraceptives is an essential element of these services. Increasingly, Ministries of Health are bearing the management and financial responsibility of the supply chain costs of delivering commodities to the public. These total supply chain costs are usually not known or considered in the cost of delivering a health service. It has been shown in state-of-the-art, private sector logistics systems that lowest cost supply chains are obtained through careful attention to strategy and supply chain productivity. Data available on total logistics costs are relevant to a variety of logistics decisions, including economic order quantities, frequency of delivery and developing financial performance measures for benchmarking
Methodology: Supply chain cost model has been developed and applied in Ghana. Quantitative data has been gathered on the total logistics costs. Supply chain optimization and cost trade-off analysis are applied to achieve highest level of customer service at more efficient levels of costs for health services.
Results: In comparison to private sector logistics systems the rates of supply chain costs to commodity value is excessive. Public health sector logistics contain inefficiencies that could be overcome by improved supply chain integration, which lead to significant cost savings. While the trend in health programs is towards decentralizing management, optimization of service and cost is in supply chains is better realized with a degree of centralized management.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, the participant will be able to: (1)Describe a model for conducting public health commodity supply chain cost analysis. (2) Discuss the application of the model to the public health commodities supply chain in one country. (3)Identify optimization and cost trade-off options for achieving the highest level of customer service at the most efficient levels of cost for public health supply chains
Keywords: International Family Planning, Public Health Infrastructure
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Ministry of Health(MOH), Ghana, John Snow Inc./Family Planning Logistics Management (JSI/FPLM)
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.