Assessment of Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Performance: The Case of Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital
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Date
2024-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
PSC is a critical component of healthcare institutions that diagnose, treat, and prevent disease. Health institutions that lack a pharmaceutical supply chain and effective supply management fail to promote societal well-being and health. This study aims to examine Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital's pharmaceutical supply chain performance in terms of responsiveness, reliability, flexibility, cost, and management efficiency.
From April 20 to May 20, 2024, 55 pharmacy personnel at Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital participated in the study, which used a cross-sectional descriptive design. The study employed a mixed research strategy. Because of the hospital's small target population, it was chosen to adopt a census method to gather insight into pharmaceutical supply chain performance. To maintain the confidentiality of the respondents' data, the subjects were assured that their responses would be used only for the research study and would be treated strictly confidentially by an institutional cooperative letter from the School of Commerce to the Tikur Anbessa specialized hospital. The data were gathered using self-administered questionnaires distributed to pharmacy personnel and interviews with key informants. The observation was along with data collection. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 21.
Based on findings on documentation practice, the hospital had properly documented, reported and requested pharmaceutical supply chain rather than trained the employees before giving service about the documentation format. However, the study showed an overblowing gap in that the hospital didn’t evaluate its customers' (patients) satisfaction and saw complain. On the other side, the hospital couldn’t properly manage the pharmaceutical asset and optimize assets. Results also revealed that the hospital supply chain performance average mean values were 2.96 with respect to responsiveness, 2.43 in cost, 2.55 in reliability, and 3.60 in asset management, and the hospital didn’t allow private procurement to compensate for the shortage of pharmaceutical products. From the findings, we can conclude that the performance of the pharmaceutical supply chain was good in terms of reliability and cost, moderate in terms of responsiveness, low in terms of asset management, and not agile in the procurement of pharmaceutical products. It recommended that the hospital will work the weakness side its performance and gaps.
Keywords: pharmaceutical supply chain, health SC, supply chain performance