Healthcare Logistics and Transportation: Industry growth that delivers value

Since MedSpeed’s inception, we’ve believed in the important role healthcare logistics and transportation can play in the healthcare industry. A recent global report about the growth of the healthcare transportation services market studies that question.

According to the 151-page report for an analysis conducted by IndustryARC, healthcare transportation/logistics is a burgeoning business with significant projected growth. IndustryARC estimates that the global healthcare transportation services market will reach $93.2 billion in 2021. That reflects a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.17% from $73.48 billion in 2015.

in Blog / Healthcare Transportation / Intra-company Logistics / Physical Integration / Value 0 comments

Air Traffic Control and Healthcare?

I recently read a MedCityNews post that used an air traffic control metaphor to describe what the future of healthcare could look like. The article compares the future of hospital operations with how air traffic control’s efficient and streamlined scheduling and operations transformed air travel.

The idea of pulling together activities that if treated individually and uncoordinated could be dangerous and/or cause service disruption resonates. We look at healthcare logistics in a similar manner. How can we take activities that used to be handled individually and develop new processes and infrastructure to turn those individual components into something better?

in Blog / Future of Healthcare / Integration / Physical Integration 0 comments

Sustainability for Successful Healthcare Management

Traditionally, when we hear the word “sustainability,” it conjures up ideas of the health of the environment and the idea of “going green.” And that is clearly a very large part of the sustainability movement, but the concept of sustainability extends further.

MedSpeed is a member of Practice Greenhealth, a not-for profit organization whose mission is to be “the source for environmental solutions for the healthcare sector that lends support to create better, safer, greener workplaces and communities.” Earlier this year, Laura Wenger, Executive Director of Practice Greenhealth wrote, “Sustainability isn’t just about environmental stewardship. As the [health] sector faces increased financial pressures, more hospitals and health care facilities should prioritize sustainability as a way to strategically manage rising costs.”

Integration: Early in the game of healthcare reform

At the recent annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco—“where Wall Street meets healthcare to talk business,” according to HealthLeaders the themes ranged from preparing for the newly insured to continuing the expansion of clinically integrated networks. The conference included both for-profit and not-for-profit health systems discussing what had helped make them successful in this early stage of healthcare reform.

Clinical integration is a hot topic for any healthcare system, regardless of profit status in this early stage of healthcare reform. And that’s because success is dependent on it. As Chicago-based Advocate Health Care executive vice president Lee B. Sacks MD noted at the conference, “Clinical integration has allowed us to advance in value-based care.”

“Skate to Where the Puck Will Be” to Improve Healthcare System Integration

MedSpeed recently published a report on the roundtable we facilitated at the 2013 Fall IDN Summit in Phoenix, AZ, the fourth in a series of symposiums we’ve conducted with healthcare supply chain leaders. We learned that most IDNs are engaged in—and some are much further along—the process of trying to figure out how to really act as integrated systems.

We discussed the strategic role that the supply chain plays in system integration, and the tangible benefits that transportation can provide for improved integration across a system. The conclusion was that an effective, reliable, centralized healthcare transportation network can help expanding systems stay physically connected.