Proper hospital inventory management can be tricky: administrators and healthcare supply chain professionals must make sure their facilities have enough product to meet demand from doctors and nurses, but not too much that it negatively impacts the hospital’s budget or takes up too much space.

1. Collect Data from the Supply Chain  

Failing to use supply chain data can result in billions of wasted dollars. Instead, use this data to determine if your inventory management is as cost-effective as it could be. While supply data has been siloed in the past, more organizations are looking to build IT systems that use value-based reimbursement models, according to a 2016 Black Book survey. Using these value-based models, organizations can more accurately link supplies needed and patient outcomes.

2. Assign Team Responsibilities Clearly

Everyone whose work involves a hospital’s supplies must have a strong understanding of his or her role in healthcare inventory management. Whether they are cleaning the rooms, ordering the supplies, or checking the purchase orders for accuracy, it is important that hospital staff members all understand what their role is and how it contributes to successful inventory management.

3. Frequently Analyze Usage Vs. Order Frequency

This ratio is one of the most important numbers to understand when it comes to efficient hospital inventory management. You should be sure that you know how much of a certain item you are ordering per week, month, or quarter compared to how much of that item you are using in the same timeframe. If the numbers don’t match, you could have a situation in which you have too little or too much product. Making periodic adjustments to your ordering patterns based on the