The healthcare establishment which won this year’s first prize in the European Private Hospitalization Awards in this category is:
Cuf Hospital, Lissabon, Portugal
for its LEAD – Logistics Efficiency with Analytics Development project
The LEAD project signifies the development of a novel technological solution designed to provide greater optimization of internal logistics processes, which play a pivotal role with strong impact on the performance and service excellence of CUF’s hospital units, allowing for greater efficiency throughout its supply chain.
Developed in collaboration with LTPLabs, a renowned organization with vast experience and expertise in developing logistics solutions, the LEAD solution addresses the particularities of the entire logistics ecosystem of CUF’s hospital units, which are very specific to the health sector. This collaboration was catalysed by the need to create greater operational performance of the entire stock control and management system, which triggered the opportunity for a successful collaboration between the two entities. Such collaboration was instrumental in the designing, developing, and training procurement algorithms using Artificial Intelligence technologies, allowing the creation of a solution that would respond to the various requirements and problems of its supply chain, mitigating risks of waste, ruptures, error or supply failures while enhancing greater control of its processes.
- The entire solution was developed from scratch, with a view to a collaborative approach that would ultimately ensure an improvement in the provision of healthcare to patients, thus guaranteeing the existence of all the necessary materials and equipment in the various CUF hospital units, ensuring exemplary patient care and experiences. Furthermore, it sought to infuse our operations with greater financial and logistical sustainability, yielding significant gains in terms of their inventories. As a cutting-edge, pioneering solution in Portugal’s healthcare sector, the LEAD project endeavoured to:
– Rethink and challenge end-to-end the supply chain: procurement, purchasing, replenishment, distribution and reverse logistics;
– Implement initiatives to enhance processes and decision support methods in logistics, engaging all interested parties;
– Cultivate a more analytical mindset, developing reports, dashboard and algorithms to promote a more fact-based decision making process;
– Improve supply chain performance, increasing service level (stock availability) and reducing inventory levels;
– Increase the response capacity to disruptive events (e.g., stock outs, overstocks) through actionable reports that trigger our team for such episodes;
– Ensure compliance with CUF targe goals, increasing efficiency in logistics and maintaining the level of service to clinical operations;
– Trigger the conversion of decentralised processes into centralised ones (centralised management of stocks, consignment, and reverse logistics processes);
– Ensure greater efficiency and sustainability of hospital units;
– Guarantee continuous improvement in patient care, ensuring a positive impact on the patient treatment experience.
CUF operates a distribution centre that manages 20,000 different materials a year and has been expanding the number of clinics and hospital units. Thus, the development of this project aimed to bring about significant improvements in patient service, guaranteeing the performance of all medical acts and the provision of accurate care, through the existence of a more efficient logistics process, as well as greater sustainability of the entire supply process.
Its impact on the provision of health care to patients is clearly significant, making it possible not only to diminish waiting times, but also to increase the reliability and safety of medical procedures (with a particular impact on surgeries), mitigating patient and medical team stress due to potential stock-outs, ensuring faster patient care and securing the availability of necessary resources at the right time and place.
The CUF team, in collaboration with LTPLabs, devised a solution that would have an impact on the service provided by CUF hospital units, bringing the following impacts for the patient benefits:
- Ensures the reliability of material in the right place and in the right quantity, reducing interruptions and cancellations of surgeries or treatments;
- Contributes to the reduction or elimination of cancellations by improving the efficiency of operational management in operating rooms, allowing greater and better access for the client to surgery;
- Shifts the clinical team’s focus to clinical procedures rather than logistical concerns, allowing for improved clinical results;
- Greater agility in patient care, ensuring that the necessary resources are available at the right time;
- Increased safety of materials through better control of stock expiry dates;
- Improved quality of service, with increased patient and healthcare professional satisfaction, due to the efficiency and reliability of the logistics system;
- Improved patient experience;
- Contribution to the reduction of errors in the administration of medicines or misuse of materials, guaranteeing patient safety.
It is therefore clear that an efficient logistics system can help improve the quality of patient care, ensuring that patients receive the care they need quickly, reliably and safely.
With the development of this new solution, it was possible to achieve significant gains and results, which had a significant impact on the performance and decision-making of the logistics processes. This new approach implemented in CUF’s supply chain has been instrumental in upholding our stringent quality and safety standards, as well as promoting greater financial sustainability for the organization. To date, the following achievements have been notable:
- Stock reduction (cost reduction of around €9M);
- Reduction in the amount of space occupied by purchasing excess stock;
- Stock outs decreased from 5% (January 2023) to 2,5% (March 2024), increasing inventory availability;
- Inventory with coverage of more than 1 year reduced by 64% (€4.5M December 2021 to €1.6M March 2024);
- Improvement in the indicator for breakage rates, ensuring greater security in the availability of materials;
- Instantiate for the hospital scenario the decision models previously developed for the retail and production sectors (replenishment, dashboards, etc.), which will allow LTPlabs to accelerate its growth within the healthcare sector.
