Did you know that more than 1.2 million people are living in aged care homes? These people depend on aged care centers for proper medication and quality care. However, this is not always the case, especially when aged care homes fail to implement supply chain visibility protocols.
Read also: How 3D Technology Is Revolutionizing Supply Chain Visibility
In healthcare and nursing homes, supply chain visibility refers to tracking, monitoring, and managing the movement of healthcare products. This means that nurses must always know where medications are. In addition, they must be able to monitor the environmental conditions, such as temperature and humidity levels, to ensure supplies do not go bad.
Similarly, supply chain visibility also involves accurately tracking inventory levels to ensure that essential drugs do not expire or deplete.
This article will expand on supply chain visibility, its importance, and implementation challenges.
Understanding Real-Time Supply Chain Visibility
For real time supply chain visibility to be actually effective, aged care facilities must use digital tools to collect and analyse the data in real time.
In some facilities, real-time supply chain visibility allows tracking medications as they are manufactured, shipped, received, stored, and used. Using digital tools, staff can confirm that the correct supply has been ordered, registered, and used.
According to the American Public Universitysupply chain visibility is essential because it guarantees better patient outcomes and reduces medication errors.
Contrary to popular belief, implementing supply chain visibility protocols is not optional. Regulatory bodies such as the Food and Drug Administration have passed legislation requiring medical facilities to ensure traceability in their supplies.
An example of such legislation is the Drug Supply Security Act (DSCSA). The act requires medical facilities, including nursing homes, to implement full traceability of prescription drugs. Failure to comply with this law can result in license suspension, criminal charges, and loss of business reputation.
Key Benefits of Real-Time Visibility for Drug Safety
One main benefit of real-time visibility for drug safety is that care homes can reduce medication errors through timely access. For elderly residents, timely access to medication is not merely a matter of convenience, but one of safety.
In addition, older adults are often prescribed several drugs to deal with a wide range of diseases such as dementia, heart disease, and diabetes.
According to research done by the HHS Office of Inspector General22% of patients in aged homes experienced adverse events due to substandard treatment and delay of necessary care. This resulted in the residents returning to the hospital, losing over 200 million dollars.
Other benefits of real-time visibility for drug safety are:
It Improves Storage Conditions for Medicines
Real-time visibility helps improve the storage conditions for sensitive medications such as vaccines and certain antibiotics. These medications require specific temperatures and humidity, or they can become unsafe or lose effectiveness.
Unsafe medicine can compromise the safety of the patient, resulting in death. Real-time supply chain systems can detect temperature and humidity abnormalities and inform the staff before they affect the drugs.
Enhances Regulatory Compliance
By implementing real-time visibility, aged care facilities ensure they comply with various regulatory requirements on handling medical supplies.Not following these rules can lead to fines or legal action.
An example of regulatory requirements that apply includes regulation 42 CFR § 483.45 enforced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. According to this regulation, aged care facilities must provide pharmaceutical services from qualified staff. The regulation also states that proper procedures must be implemented to acquire, receive, and store drugs.
Boosts Operational Efficiency and Inventory Planning
Real-time visibility helps reduce overstocking, emergency purchases, and waste caused by expired supplies. Staff can access live data on stock levels and usage trends. The live data empowers the aged care facilities to make smarter purchasing decisions, lowering costs and improving efficiency.
The Challenges in Aged Care Drug Supply Chains and How to Overcome Them
One of the main challenges in the aged care drug supply chain is that multiple pharmaceutical and logistical providers use different systems. This makes the data fragmented and challenging to analyse. As a result, most aged care facilities use spreadsheets or paper logs to track supplies.
This leads to duplicate records and raises the risk of errors. The best way to solve this problem is to use a single integrated platform that collects all the data. The facility can then use the data for real-time tracking and analysis.
Cold Chain Logistics and Temperature Sensitivity
Another challenge affecting aged care facilities is sensitive medication such as insulin and vaccines. These medications must be stored at specific temperatures and humidity.
If the temperature threshold is breached, the medication effectiveness can be compromised, posing a serious health risk to residents. To solve this problem, aged care facilities should implement real-time monitoring to automatically track and record environmental conditions. These systems can adjust the temperatures and sound alarms if there is a system error.
The Future of Drug Safety in Aged Care
Smarter systems, stronger regulations, and better collaborative care models will shape the future of drug safety in aged care facilities. Also, more predictive management systems will be set up to analyse real-time supply and patient data.
Predictive management systems will help predict a facility’s medical needs and identify at-risk residents before an issue arises.
The future will also see the adoption of integrated digital ecosystems connecting different manufacturers, suppliers, and logistical providers to one platform. This will reduce the decentralisation of data, enabling aged care facilities to make better-informed decisions.
Lastly, there will be stricter regulations for traceability and accountability. Governments will also penalise facilities and owners who fail to adhere to these regulations.
In conclusion, real-time supply chain visibility is the only way to minimise healthcare errors and ensure regulatory compliance. Supply chain visibility reduces losses and improves the quality of life for residents.
Author Bio
Lesley Barton is the National Clinical and Training Manager at Bunzl & Amhcwith over 40 years of healthcare experience. A Registered Nurse, Midwife, and Continence Nurse Specialist, she transitioned into healthcare sales and management, leading education in continence, wound care, and medical consumables.
She serves as a Board Director at the Continence Foundation of Australia and founded the Clinical Care Connections (CCC) program, playing a key role in developing Atlas McNeil Healthcare’s education and training initiatives to support best practices in clinical care.
