Need for MBA Procurement and Supply Chain Management in Healthcare Industry

The MBA Procurement and Supply Chain Management (PSM) in Health is a two-year full-time program. It is one of the unique courses being offered in the South East Asian region and is designed to enrich the students with knowledge of the latest management tools and concepts in order to develop   essential   competencies in PSM with aim at developing outstanding professionals to meet the demands of international and national government   and   non-government organizations, public and private healthcare organizations.

Objective of the Program

The specific objectives of the program are to enable students to understand, comprehend concepts, principles and develop managerial capacities on:

• ·         Management of Health products for public health programmes

• ·         Policy and Economic Issues including legal framework, financing and sustainability PSSCMS

• ·         Managing National & International projects/programmes related to procurement & supply chain management of Health products supported by GoI & other donors like World Bank, GFATM, USAID, UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, DFID, BMGF etc.

Viability and Market Needs of the Program

Recent advances in science and medicines to achieve universal health coverage through public/donor funding for vast national and global health needs, the advent of innovative information technologies, and greater focus on building strong health systems have made it imperative to focus on various aspects of procurement and supply chain management in health.

The program is designed to cater the growing demand of the specific healthcare professionals to ensure access to quality medicines and health technologies. While developing and designing the curricula for this program, the first draft was shared with number of experts in PSM for their comments, inputs and suggestions to cater the requirements of the field. Besides requested suggestions, responses by few external experts on need of this kind of course, sufficiently endorse the market need and viability of this MBA program in PSM. 


Reflections pertaining to market need and viability by some experts are as under:-

     Tauqueer Ahmad, Supply Chain State Program Manager, USAID|DELIVER Project, John Snow India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi: I would like to appreciate the initiative and consideration of IIHMR University to launch the Supply Chain Management (SCM) course in Public Health which is nascent stage in our country and obviously the most required field to improve the health program across the country. Everyone is envisioned to launch new program in health sector to fight with communicable or non-communicable disease but without thinking that the program cannot be succeeded if the supply chain is not integrated at all level by professional. 

            Jyoti S. Choudhary, Procurement & SCM Specialist, United Nations Development Programme, New Delhi: suggested for incorporating the word “Procurement” in the title as major manpower requirement in global context are for “Procurement and Supply Chain (SCM)” experts.

    

     Mr. Nilakantha Bhoi, Procurement & Supply Chain Management Expert (Health Sector Goods), (Empanelled Public Procurement Trainer/ Consultant, The World Bank), Advisor, Procurement (Health & Nutrition), IPE Global Pvt. Ltd,: It is good that the IIHMR is planning to run a full time programme in PSM 

      Dr. Parminder Gautam, Sr. Consultant (Quality Improvement), NHSRC, New Delhi:  A post graduate course in Logistics and Supply chain Management is ‘need of the hour’; especially when MoHFW is coming up with National Health Assurance Mission wherein a minimum number of drugs and investigations would be made free to ALL. 

  

     Ms. Ritu Khushu, Associate Director, Strategic Alliance Management System (SAMS), New Delhi: Thanks for sharing the MBA course content. Very impressive.

    Improving Supply Chain Management Systems Project (ISCMS) The supply chain management assessment carried out by the USAID/Deliver Project indicates a major need to strengthen human resource capacity to ensure effective supply chain management.  There is a significant shortage of staff responsible for commodity management, especially pharmacists.  There is no formal logistics training being provided for existing supply chain management personnel.  In order to have efficient and skilled human resources needed to carry out supply chain management functions, there is a need to create a logistics management unit at the state level to coordinate all supply chain functions and activities.  There is also need to develop standard operating procedures which provide formal guidance on the roles and responsibilities of staff involved in supply chain activities.

In view of clear thrust indicated under the Draft National Health Policy by the Government of India for adoption of Tamil Nadu / Rajasthan model for free distribution of medicines to all to ensure universal health coverage in order to reduce out of pocket expenses, would generate the need of trained and competent manpower in PSM.