Endoscopic Supply Chain Management and Optimization.

Endoscopy is a procedural specialty that incurs significant cost through its high usage of consumables. Thus, supply chain management and optimization in endoscopy can improve value-based care, by identifying areas of cost saving in device procurement. Creating a multidisciplinary supply chain management team, such as multidisciplinary endoscopic device committee (MEDC), suggests a way to optimize supply chain. The essential components of MEDC are physicians, clinical administration, and institutional supply chain. The physicians in the committee identify new products, define the value of products, lead the product acquisition decision-making process, and generate a practice guideline to define meaningful use of the product. The tasks of MEDC are product acquisition aligning with clinical care, review of meaningful use, and utilization of guidelines creation. In conjunction with group purchasing organization (GPO), which aggregates purchasing volume to leverage cost saving during negotiations, MEDC offers a model to optimize the endoscopy supply chain management.