Preparing for future supply disruptions: a roadmap from the healthcare procurement perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed critical vulnerabilities in healthcare systems, particularly in hospital procurement and preparedness for supply chain disruptions. This study aims to investigate how healthcare procurement professionals can develop sustainable preparedness plans for future supply disruptions.

A case study approach was adopted in this research. Data collection was performed through 15 semi-structured interviews with purchasing experts in 11 German hospitals.

The findings of this research led to the development of a roadmap to support preparedness planning, based on the best practices identified by hospital purchasing professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also identified six types of barriers affecting physical preparedness, intangible preparedness activities and both simultaneously. The best practices were categorised under six domains: storage, human resources, knowledge management, operations and process management, financial resources and community collaboration. The findings suggest that combining different types of preparedness activities is essential for developing preparedness plans.

This research provides practical guidelines for hospital purchasing professionals to better prepare for future disruptions, such as a roadmap to improve preparedness.

A healthcare procurement lens is applied in our study, exploring preparedness at the organisational level, a perspective that has been underexplored in literature. This study raises awareness of the lack of preparedness plans in hospitals from a procurement perspective. This research provides a roadmap based on best practices to strengthen hospitals' preparedness plans for possible future disruptions.