Healthcare Supply Chain Technology and Strategy

The quote, “trust, but verify,” is actually an old Russian proverb that President Ronald Reagan used during arms control negotiations with Russian President  Mikhail Gorbachev  in the 1980s. He learned the quote in the Russian language and used the phrase frequently as he and President Gorbachev worked to prevent the promise of mutually assured destruction if the two superpowers failed to get along during that era.  Our message for today is not really a history lesson but more of wake up call for those of you in the pharmaceutical space , or looking to go into.  This month OptumRx one the largest pharmacy care services, any the pharmacy that manages our health care plan as well, Sent a letter to all it's member/partner pharmacies.  Informing them that if they were not VAWD Certified then they might likely no longer be able to participate.    IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING  Pharmacy – Wholesalers Effective Date: 10/01/2016   OptumRx Veri...

Use your vendor partners to get your fill rates where they need to be  An ever elusive goal is the perfect order, 100% fulfillment and no backorders, but the reality of today's business is that heavy inventory investment is no longer a possibility.  You can just keep everything in stock any more. To help you compete in the fast paced "JIT"- Just in Time , or Next Day Shipping environments, MDS now offers a Next Day Vendor module. Rather then try to figure out usage patterns and forecast demand etc..  You can now pass those headaches to your vendors and make the process transparent to your customers.  Many distributors already do this and we have already discussed our special Tie to sales order PO logic - which allows you to take a sales order and have it create a special po to ship and match to the sales order, - well with the next day vendor logic , any Item flagged as next day vendor is treated as in stock and will go on a building order for that vendor.  The ...

The Economy continues to slowly grow, but in some segments we are seeing "pockets of growth" or specialized high growth Niche areas in the sea of steady growth.   With 2016 almost gone and the last quarter just around the corner, the question is: How can distributors exploit "pockets of growth" without wasting time and effort on the segments that will remain persistently flat this year?  In the end it comes to down to this:   What worked last year or the year before will not necessarily work again in 2016.   With this in mind distributors need to be: Constantly innovating,  Seeking new market opportunities,  Going after smaller m ore promising market niches  The business climate has changed quite a bit in the last five to seven years to compete effectively, distributors should be pursuing new opportunities, looking for untapped growth markets, and hitting fresh customer segments. Some Ways to Leverage New Opportunities While the national economy i...