MODERN LOGISTICS IN HEALTH SERVICE

Abstract

The primary task of all hospitals is to improve the health of patients. In a typical hospital a large number of people perform logistics operations often without being aware of it. The aging of the population, particularly evident in Europe, contributes to the increase in the workload of the healthcare system. To ensure the desired level of healthcare services some services such as logistics must be effectively coordinated to ensure the quality and continuity of care. Logistics in medical activities is a field that is not visible to the patient, but directly affects the quality of health services, which is an important area of interest for the healthcare organization. In most cases, hospital logistics has relied so far on the selection of appropriate suppliers in different areas of activity, starting from the supply of drugs, equipment, laundry, through transportation to the transplant ending up with the food catering. Such an approach in a selfmanagement in most cases had various effects very often totally inefficient. In the recent period it has been observed the development of logistics services in the medical activity which applies the most advanced technological achievements among them information technologies supported by management, maintenance-free means of transport, automated transport, technologies of automatic identification. In the paper the modern forms of logistics used in healthcare were presented. The benefits of these solutions were shown. These benefits may be of two types. On the one hand they reduce the costs associated with the operation of the hospital, on the other one they increase security, reliability and availability at any time. A significant share of attention in the article is devoted to the supply chains based on modern means of transport. These measures are used to transport people and materials.