by: Karen Wagner Being responsive to the supply needs of a demanding department requires determining who can manage supplies most efficiently and what tools and storage methods can offer the greatest benefits. Here, Texas Children’s Hospital shares four strategies for success. Effectively managing a supply chain is an enormous undertaking for any healthcare organization, but add in the unpredictability of a labor and delivery environment and the challenges multiply. A case in point is the Pavilion for Women at Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston. The 100-bed facility, opened last March, specializes in multiple births and high-risk pregnancies and can accommodate 5,000 births annually. Evidence of the unpredictable environment came one morning last April: One minute, the hospital was quiet; the next, a patient was brought in who gave birth prematurely to sextuplets. According to Rick McFee, Texas Children’s Hospital’s director of supply chain management, being ready for the unexpected is the focus of his department, which also manages supplies for the 555-bed pediatrics hospital and a 24-bed pediatric acute care facility on Houston’s west side. “It’s very difficult to have any kind of consistent supply utilization. You may have three days where you have very low volume activity, and then you may have four days in which you’re really struggling with capacity,” McFee says. “You may have days where supplies are barely used at all; then, you’ll have days where they’ve used everything we’ve got. So we’ve got to be very nimble. We’ve got to be able to respond very quickly.”…
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