The Impact of Supply Chain Transformation |30 in Alberta Health Services, Canada .
and review it, and as a group the organization decides … these are going to be the five projects for this year. The supply chain strategy in Alberta was centrally focused on being “clinically engaged”: it enabled clinicians to not only understand the importance of supply chain, but to be central decision-makers in determining program needs and participating in procurement strategies that achieve value for each program. The added feature of the strategy was to position Alberta as a valued and important customer for vendors, whereby the potential for investment in research and product evaluation could bring additional resources to the provincial health system. Alberta’s integrated supply chain strategy has extended beyond the “low-hanging fruit” of bulk-buying and unit-level pricing: We’re now looking at efficiencies, and that’s where it comes to data standards, and we start talking about barcoding. We’re beyond the easy stuff, which is just doing unit-level pricing. … We’re now looking at how we can become more efficient, because that’s where those fine dollars are going to be found. It’s “How can [we] do more for the same [cost]?” The CPSM team is positioned as the enabler to program teams across the system, to support advancing quality, safety and affordability of care. As the system advances, tracking and tracing products and medical devices to individual patients is a long-term goal for Alberta, as it works towards greater efficiencies and quality of patient care. The CPSM team works alongside clinical programs to enable a shift towards forecast planning and predicting risk to inform risk mitigation strategies, scaling solutions across the province. This approach reduces inventory costs and helps meet budgetary targets for each program. The program teams are gradually becoming very reliant on supply chain staff expertise to engage clinical teams in identifying savings and efficiencies, and manage equipment and supplies across the system. Gradually, such expertise has become highly sought after, because program teams are increasingly realizing the opportunity to achieve their budget targets by working closely with the CPSM team to manage inventory, standardize products and reduce costs. CPSM has also developed strategies to actively engage with clinical teams for contracting activity through integration of staff working with a number of program areas such as IT, as well as other support services departments such as construction, food, linen and environmental services, laboratory, diagnostic imaging and pharmaceuticals.
3. Relationship Management and Physician Engagement Formal working groups have been established in each zone. The committees include Medical/Surgical, Perioperative, and Zone CPSM Leadership Councils. CPSM staff meet with these committees at regular intervals to discuss all matters related to supply chain and contracts. They also actively solicit feedback on all CPSM strategies, including making decisions on which items should be added to the warehouses, identifying new products entering the system and any other issues that affect delivery of services. The engagement of clinicians and program teams in working with the CPSM