Healthcare Logistics Management Practices and Their Challenges for Non-Program Drugs: The Case of Addis Ababa City Administration Health Bureau Hospitals
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Date
2024-06
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Addis ababa Universty
Abstract
Essential medicines should always be available in a sufficient quantity for the functioning of a healthcare system. The pharmaceutical logistics system is accepted and guaranteed if both programs and non-program drugs (NPDs) are managed accordingly. The management of all logistics practices within health facilities is necessary for NPDs to perform pharma-ceutical logistics effectively. The objective of this study was to assess the healthcare logis-tics management practices of NPDs and to identify their main challenges. The research was carried out in hospitals under Addis Ababa City Administration Health Bureau from June 2 to July 20, 2023. A combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches were used to conduct both explanatory and descriptive cross-sectional research design. Data were gath-ered using structured questionnaires, in-depth interviews, and observational checklists. Analysis was performed by using SPSS version 21. The results of descriptive analysis demonstrated that the majority of the respondents disagreed for having good quantifica-tion/forecasting, procurement, LMIS, and storage condition practices, whereas the majority of the respondents agreed for having good inventory management practices; this imply that healthcare logistics management practices of NPDs is not being practiced well in the facili-ties . The findings of inferential analysis showed that 51.8 % variance in healthcare logis-tics management practices is explained by the human resource, financial resource and in-frastructure and information technology challenges, while the rest 48.2% of the variance is explained by other challenges which are not covered by this study. Healthcare logistics management practice is strongly correlated with infrastructure and information technology challenges with a Pearson correlation coefficient and a significant value of (r=0.555, P=0.000) and moderately correlated with financial resource challenges (r=0.467, P=0.000) and human resource challenges (r=0.422, P=0.000). Therefore, hospitals under Addis Aba-ba City Administration Health Bureau should improve the healthcare logistics management practices of NPDs in order to prevent stock outs by preventing quantification/forecasting errors due to poor logistics data quality, since information is the back bone for all healthcare logistics activities and also the storage rooms of the facilities should be stand-ardized.
Key words: Essential medicines, pharmaceuticals, non-program drugs (NPDs), Logistics management information system (LMIS), healthcare, logistics