When people think about urgency in the medical field, it’s often connected with images like racing ambulances and skilled ER doctors. While there’s no denying how important these life-saving measures are, the truth is that the consistency and reliability of medical logistics are just as important.
If you work for a hospital, pharmacy, doctor’s office, or other business that deals directly with our health and wellness, it’s important to fully understand what’s involved with medical logistics.
As a medical courier service serving the mid-Atlantic, we want to share our expertise on the subject today. Read on for a breakdown of everything involved with medical logistics.
Defining Medical Logistics
To begin understanding the importance of medical logistics, we’ll start by breaking down each of its parts.
Logistics
As a part of supply chain management, logistics refers to ensuring that everything is in the right place at the right time. Depending on the industry, that includes tracking the physical materials as well as the staff involved.
Ultimately, logistics help us meet our goals as a business by keeping the pieces of a project moving and on schedule.
Medical
This one may be more easily understood thanks to the media’s portrayal. From a topical standpoint, this includes anything related to medicine, the treatment of illnesses and injuries, and our overall health.
From a professional standpoint, this would include healthcare professionals, like doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, and more.
Medical Logistics
Now, we get to the important part. Combining logistics with the medical industry creates a system for the movement of medical, pharmaceutical, and surgical supplies.
That includes but isn’t limited to:
- Medical specimens
- Medical devices
- Lab equipment
- Support equipment for healthcare providers
The Great Debate: Effectiveness vs. Efficiency in the Medical Logistics Industry
In a perfect world, logistics could be both 100% effective and 100% efficient. The reality, though, is that often some choices have to be made that tip the scale toward one or the other.
That’s what can set apart other logistics industries like oil and gas, construction, and civil engineering from the medical side.
Let’s see how.
In a general sense, efficiency is about reducing effort and waste in order to perform our best.
Being effective is about how well our work produces the expected result.
In most industries, efficiency is often the main priority. They want to ship faster for less money, for example.
With medical logistics companies, though, the end goal is ensuring a patient’s well-being. That means being effective at that goal has to outweigh efficiency.
Think about it this way: it might be more efficient to ship organs in a non-temperature controlled environment because it would cost less. However, it would almost certainly fail to be an effective solution that delivered a satisfactory, usable organ to the patient.
That’s why effectiveness is so important in medical logistics.
Medical Logistics As Part Of The Supply Chain
Even with the debate of efficiency vs effectiveness, medical logistics is a part of the supply chain. There are still pickups and drop-offs, shipping, tracking, and more connecting one party to another.
Managing that supply chain, especially with medical logistics, is about making the flow of materials as smooth and reliable as possible.
By creating a chain that can be depended on, health care professionals can better perform their tasks and the patients who rely on medical specimens and medicine can expect them to be delivered on time.
Hiring Medical Logistics Professionals In Maryland
At Expedite Delivery System, we pride ourselves on our professional handling of all of the medical logistics elements.
With our professionally trained & attired couriers, trackable driver actions, chain of custody documentation, and temperature-controlled deliveries, we ensure both medical professionals and patients benefit.
To find out more about our medical courier services and the work we’ve done managing medical logistics, please get in touch with our expert team today.
