Skip to content

IS IT POSSIBLE TO TURN AROUND THE TREND ON INCREASING AMOUNT OF BACKORDERS AT THE NATIONAL LEVEL

Pdf

PDF Icon

European Statement

Selection, Procurement and Distribution

Author(s)

L. Munck

Why was it done?

Globally, we are facing an increasing amount of drug shortages, even though international regulatory authorities take initiatives to improve this.

We have national order data available through one national organisation that manages all tenders and backorders for drug supplies to all hospital pharmacies.

Access to order data enabled us to start this improvement initiative in May 2014, and hence fight the backorder challenge at the national level.

What was done?

We applied LEAN and Supplier Collaboration to turn around the trend of increasing amount of drug backorders to hospital pharmacies.

Our initiative consisted of tight follow-up and continuous improvements with ‘TOP6-suppliers’, (ie, the 6 suppliers with currently the most negative impact on our national drug supply).

‘TOP6-suppliers’ are selected each week at LEAN board meetings.
Tight supplier follow-up, by e-mail, weekly:
We informed the ‘TOP6-suppliers’ that they currently are among the suppliers with the most backorders, and asked them to:

• Confirm/update delivery dates for all open backorders
• Inform us of the underlying reason for each backorder

The suppliers continue to receive weekly emails, as long as they are selected as ‘TOP6-supplier’.

Continuous improvement meetings, face-to-face, quarterly:
We had meetings with the 3 suppliers with the highest level of backorders/poorest level of improvements.

Meeting agenda: Reasons behind current backorder situation and actions to improve.

How was it done?

Obstacles—>Our solutions:
Too busy managing actual backorders and no time to drive improvements—>Added one dedicated resource to drive this initiative.

How to manage our effort—>Develop leading key performance indicators (KPIs) that ensure focus on influence and improvements.

We were not always confident that our effort would provide the expected results—>Continue to focus on the agreed approach and KPIs, even if it takes approximately 12 months before we achieve improvements.

What has been achieved?

• Backorder amount decreased by 25%.
• 3rd quarter2014: On average, 99 item-numbers in backorder (range 87-117).
• 3rd quarter 2015: On average, 74 item-numbers in backorder (range 67-99).
• Closer dialogue and improved cooperation with our suppliers with most/critical backorders.

What next?

1. Share achievements.
2. Start an international network to share best practices.
3. Together achieve further improvements in drug supply.

×

EAHP Forum

All the EAHP team is working on providing a Forum that can help connect all the members in Conversations and Groups to talk about important matters for the European Hospital Pharmacist.

The Forum will be accessible for all the EAHP members, you don’t have to create a new account to browse and participate.

Conversations and groups

The Conversations will be moderated by our team to provide documents and relevant topics for the community.

The Groups will connect all members that share a category. Members who work on the same assocation, on the same hospital, that have the same role, etc.

Stay tuned for the realase of the forum. Soon on EAHP.