Best practices for demand-driven supply chain management in public healthcare sector: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Healthcare supply chains ensure that there is a cost-effective availability of medicines at healthcare facilities. However, it appears that public healthcare supply chains in South Africa are experiencing significant challenges in the management and distribution of the right medicines, at the right time, and at the right cost. This has resulted in poor healthcare outcomes. Moreover, public health supply chains also face major challenges due to rising patient expectations and inefficiencies in supply chain operations. There is recent interest in increasing public health supply chain efficiency and improving patient services. To address these challenges and opportunities, other studies have suggested the transformation of healthcare supply chains from the current pure ‘push’ approach into a ‘pull’ approach, which is driven by actual customer demand (demand-driven supply chain management DDSCM). However, no guidelines exist to support the design of DDSCM in public healthcare supply chains. Therefore, through a systematic literature review, this study aims to distinguish the key success factors for the DDSCM approach from those of other industries, and subsequently develops a framework to guide the design of DDSCM for the public healthcare sector.