Logistics Services and Beyond

Abstract

Due to high pressure on costs and limited financial resources in healthcare, hospitals – being forced to curb costs – are trying to achieve cost savings by optimizing their service departments, in particular hospital logistics. In the past, logistics processes were simply outsourced to logistics service providers (LSP) in the hope of realizing these cost savings. Today, hospitals are employing a variety of methods to keep logistics costs down while at the same time trying to obtain an optimum level of service. Some hospitals are beginning to execute their logistics tasks again by themselves, albeit using a different approach. They start up subsidiaries with suitable cooperation-partners (majority-owned) with the aim of marketing their logistics services. Other hospitals have retained classic outsourcing models through purchasing logistics services in the external market. Logistics and other service providers have also changed the spectrum of services that they offer. Regardless of how a single hospital decides to organize its own hospital logistics, cooperative structures with logistics service providers and other potential partners are essential. This chapter shows that cooperation has to be designed in three layers. On the strategic layer, suitable partners are chosen. In this context, the decision has to be made whether to contract a multiservice provider or a multihospitals provider. Both of them pursue the objective of saving costs by using synergy effects. Multiservice providers expand their business in a qualitative way by offering services at many levels. Multihospital providers try to acquire as many hospitals as possible as customers, whereas multiservice providers attempt to offer a bundle of various services.