A Multi-Echelon Newsvendor Inventory Model to Consolidate Hospital Pharmacy Inventories

摘要

This paper addresses a pharmacy inventory consolidation model in a multi-hospital network. The objectives of this model are to reduce inventory levels, enhance systematic control over arbitrary demands, and eventually improve patient satisfaction. A Multi-echelon Newsvendor Inventory Model (MNIM) is applied to analyze decentralized and centralized inventory distribution models. A greedy heuristic algorithm is developed to find both optimal hospital pharmacy inventory levels and central inventory level. Optimal inventory levels for pharmaceutical items have been analyzed at different hospital pharmacies and nursing units under decentralized and centralized inventory distribution models. The degree of pharmacy inventory consolidation has also been discussed based on various cost criteria, demand patterns, and dimensions of hospitals. The experimental results indicate that a centralized hospital inventory distribution system leads to a lower total inventory cost while maintaining the desired quality of care. It is also noticed that the percentage of cost savings in a pharmacy consolidation model is positively correlated with the coefficient of demand variation and the degree of consolidations.