Inventory Management Practices in Private Healthcare Facilities in Nairobi County

Varun Karamshetty, Harwin De Vries, Luk N. Van Wassenhove, Sarah Dewilde, Warnyta Minnaard, Dennis Ongarora, Kennedy Abuga and Prashant Yadav

Production and Operations Management, 2022, vol. 31, issue 2, 828-846

Abstract: Universal health coverage (UHC) is an integral part of the United Nations sustainable development goals. The private sector plays a prominent role in achieving UHC, being the primary source of essential medicines for many people. However, many private healthcare facilities in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs) have insufficient stocks of essential medicines. Simultaneously, these same facilities carry excessive quantities of other drugs, leading to obsolescence. This suggests poor inventory control. To propose potential remedies it is vital to fully understand the underlying causes. In semi‐structured interviews with managers of private healthcare facilities in Nairobi, we asked them about their (1) inventory control systems, (2) inventory control skills, (3) time/human resource constraints, (4) budget constraints, (5) motivations for inventory control, and (6) suppliers. Our results suggest that the problems are driven by resource limitations (budget and time/human resources), managerial issues (relating to skills and systems), and market mechanisms that limit overage and underage costs. Unavailability at the supplier level and motivations for inventory control are relatively minor issues. We posit that the key causes are interlinked and stem from wider issues in the market and regulatory environment. Our results challenge prevalent beliefs about medicine supply chains in LMICs and lead to novel hypotheses. Testing these hypotheses could improve our understanding of inventory management in private healthcare facilities and aid progress in achieving UHC.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.13445

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:popmgt:v:31:y:2022:i:2:p:828-846

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://onlinelibrary ... 1111/(ISSN)1937-5956

Access Statistics for this article

Production and Operations Management is currently edited by Kalyan Singhal

More articles in Production and Operations Management from Production and Operations Management Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().