Hierarchical Planning Models for Public Healthcare Supply Chains

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the hierarchical planning and execution for supply chain management in public healthcare services. The authors first introduce tiered organizational and services delivery structure of public healthcare services followed by various supply chain issues that public healthcare services encounters. They then review hierarchical planning and execution discussions for the strategic, tactical, and operational decisions in supply chain literature. They continue the discussion with public healthcare services cases on medicine and equipment maintenance supply chains. They compare hierarchical planning execution discussions in supply chain management literature vis-a-vis healthcare services cases. Their main argument is that much can be gained by the public healthcare services by striving for reduced information asymmetry and employing appropriate functional aggregation at various levels of the hierarchically organized public healthcare supply chains.