Mitigating the impact of drug shortages for a healthcare facility: An inventory management approach

Samira Saedi, O. Erhun Kundakcioglu and Andrea C. Henry

European Journal of Operational Research, 2016, vol. 251, issue 1, 107-123

Abstract: Despite the importance and value of the pharmaceutical market, a significant portion of procurement spending including pharmaceuticals are lost. Coupling poor and reactive management practices with the inevitable national drug shortages, leads to lack of medicines causing patient suffering and direct life or death consequences. In this paper, we propose a stochastic model to find the optimal inventory policy for a healthcare facility to proactively minimize the effect of drug shortages in the presence of uncertain disruptions and demand.

Keywords: OR in health services; Heuristics; Inventory management; Markov chain; Drug shortages (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:251:y:2016:i:1:p:107-123

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2015.11.017

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