Hospital service levels during drug shortages: Stocking and transshipment policies for pharmaceutical inventory

Abstract

In this study, we consider a health network that faces uncertain supply disruptions in the form of regional, nationwide, or worldwide drug shortages. Each hospital observes stochastic demand and if the drug is unavailable, patients leave and receive care in another network. As these instances of unavailability diminish the brand value, health networks look for inventory sharing mechanisms among hospitals to mitigate the effect of uncertain supply disruptions. In line with this expectation, we propose a proactive inventory sharing approach for critical drugs to investigate the effect of the inventory-related parameters on service levels.