ABSTRACT
The pandemic crisis and the resulting global uncertainties have obviously had a severe impact on the healthcare supply chain (HSC), leading scholars, healthcare executives, and policymakers to focus on the sustainability of the HSC. Technologies have emerged and developed rapidly in recent years, especially in the healthcare industry, for coping with the pandemic crisis and supporting the "new normal" for humankind. Within this context, various new technologies have been implemented to maximize the supply chain process, ensure patient and healthcare worker safety, and improve the quality of care. Hence, the integration of a technological dimension with the traditional three pillars of sustainability may aid in attempts to define the potential attributes of these dimensions of sustainability. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the key attributes of a sustainable healthcare supply chain (SHSC), and this paper presents a new, four-dimensional model for SHSCs, consisting of social, environmental, economic, and technological dimensions. A systematic literature review was conducted, resulting in the identification of 35 potential SHSC attributes. The Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) was then applied to determine the appropriateness of these potential attributes according to the consensus of 13 experts, including healthcare workers in a variety of medical specialties, who profoundly understand HSC sustainability. The results yielded 22 appropriate attributes, which were then categorized across the four dimensions. Consequently, a new model of an SHSC, which prioritizes patient safety, was constructed and is proposed here. This SHSC model can be applied strategically to the healthcare industry to enhance the safety of both medical personnel and patients in a sustainable manner.
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had a huge impact all over the world. Healthcare industry is one that has been greatly affected by Global supply chain disruption, including shortages of critical medical equipment and drugs, insufficiency of diagnostic, and inadequacy of medical personnel. The aforementioned problems directly affect human health in the dimension of 'patient safety' which may cause life-threatening situations. Therefore, it is important to learn how to strengthen the healthcare supply chain (HSC) and increase safety, particularly for patients. There are various researchers who studied HSC performance in developed countries but the research in developing countries especially southeast Asia countries e.g., Cambodia is scarce. Therefore, this research aims to identify and synthesize HSC performance for patient safety and provide a novel model of HSC performance in developing countries' healthcare settings. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) was conducted using a patient safety definition from WHO, International Patient Safety Goals from Joint Commission International (JCI), and the Hospital Accreditation institute (HA) from Thailand. The HSC performances are categorized under the easily recognizable heading SIMPLE (stands for patient safety goals in 6 domains as follows: Safe surgery, Infection Prevention & Control, Medication safety, Patient care process, Laboratory & blood product safety, and Emergency preparedness and response). The novel model of HSC performance for patient safety is provided to demonstrate the factors that can enhance the performance of HSC management in developing countries. Moreover, this study contributes to the meta-analysis by analyzing existing research and proposing new future research opportunities in HSC performance for patient safety that leads to social sustainability. © 2022 IEEE.