Design and operation of strategic inventory control system for drug delivery in healthcare industry

Several factors such as the raise in healthcare expenditures impose growing pressures to improve efficiency in healthcare industry Industrial engineering and operations research can be effectively used at this aim. This paper examines the optimization of a hospital's inventory costs where the central pharmacy of the hospital assumes a role of central decision maker for drugs' purchasing and their distribution to internal wards. Inventory control strategies integrating combinatorial based mechanisms and classical inventory control has been developed in order to optimize inventory costs of drugs logistics. The developed work includes into the decisional model also a partial decisional independence of wards and the special requirements of drugs delivery. Results and tests of the model's implementation on real data are reported to evaluate the goodness of offered tool and to discuss of potential real application.