Understanding the Downstream Healthcare Supply Chain : Unpacking Regulatory and Industry Characteristics

Hospital leaders face unprecedented pressure to improve traditional supply chain performance measures such as cost, quality, and customer experience. As such, healthcare executives are increasingly turning to the operations and SCM field to provide thought leadership and establish best practices around coordinating information, material and financial flows in healthcare delivery. Unfortunately, our learnings from traditional manufacturing, and to some extent other service supply chains, do not always easily port to the downstream healthcare delivery supply chain due to regulatory issues and distinctive characteristics present in this network. Grounded in Institutional Theory, this study conceptualizes the downstream healthcare delivery supply chain, highlights important regulatory pressures that influence this supply chain, and examines the effects of government regulation and the unique characteristics of this network on coordination. In doing so, this conceptual study brings to bear important contextual considerations, and motivates novel research areas where the SCM field can make substantial contributions