Benchmarking as a tool for the improvement of health services' supply departments

This paper presents a benchmarking study carried out on the supply departments of Quebec's health services. The paper begins with the definition of a methodology to collect the information needed, both environmental (to enable institutions to be sorted into homogenous groups) and performance related. The analysis of indicators and the data envelopment analysis (DEA) models allowed classification of each hospital's performance and explained the operational approaches used, either at a general level or for each subprocess of the supply chain. It was observed that important economies of scale may be achieved with better co-ordination and with the regrouping of the supplying activities, both for purchasing management and central store management. The study showed that the best performance of central store services comes with flexible administrative structures, by receiving packages as small as possible and by using employees from the lowest range of the hierarchy. Purchasing services should employ highly qualified and well-paid staff. Although such services are relatively small with respect to their purchase volume, they show a higher activity rate. As a result of the discovered performing strategies, the possible economies range from 20% to 30% of the actual supply-chain management cost.