"The State of Healthcare Logistics"

"The State of Healthcare Logistics"
Posted by Dirk Rodgers at 9:34 PM

Earlier this year The Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management (AHRMM) and the Center for Innovation in Healthcare Logistics (CIHL) at the University of Arkansas published the results of a survey they conducted in 2008 titled "The State of Healthcare Logistics". The survey polled 1381 healthcare supply chain professionals regarding their “perceptions of cost and quality efficiencies and improvement opportunities within their organization”. I’m always a little skeptical (alright, I’m a lot skeptical) of “perception surveys”, but since this one was focused on the specific supply chain that I’m a member of, I took some interest. This survey included a series of questions about the respondent’s perception of Data Standards, which really caught my eye.

In fact, I’ve been doing a little investigating myself into the competing standards that are related to supply chain master data. My career experience in this area has almost solely dealt with GS1 standards, but that may be because the healthcare part of my career has centered on the pharmaceutical distribution corner of the full healthcare supply chain. If it had been centered on the distribution of medical devices, I would have been much more familiar with HIBCC (Healthcare Industry Business Communications Council) supply chain data standards. I’ve been trying to figure out if the industry needs multiple competing data standards and, if not, which one is a better set: GS1 or HIBCC? And should I consider some other set of standards that I just don’t know about? Are there good reasons to continue the use of either or both sets of standards in our supply chain?

In this light, I turned my attention to the AHRMM/CIHL survey results, hoping to gain some valuable insight. I quickly got stuck on their very first survey question in the Data Standards section (on page 15 of their report):

A. Is your organization moving towards the adoption of a data standards system (such as GS1) in the next five years?

Now this is an amazingly bad survey question that wouldn’t even pass a “survey questions 101” class. It is a classic example of a leading question. One where the desired answer is provided directly in the question itself. But look at the choice of answers!

1. Yes – GS1
2. Yes – Other
3. No
4. Don’t Know

Wow. Clearly this survey is trying to lead the respondents to indicate support for only GS1 data standards, and it worked. Over 50% of the respondents chose answer “1”, over 30% chose answer “4”, and about 20% chose answer “3”. What about answer “2”, indicating support for “other” data standards systems? Only about 3%.

But the authors go further. Here is part of the analysis provided in the report for this survey question:

“The majority of those that indicate that they are moving towards a data standards system other than GS1 do not know which system their organization is moving towards.”

Maybe that’s because they didn’t tell the respondent which “other” systems are out there. I'm assuming that the authors were just a little sloppy and failed to include in the report the additional question(s) that provided them with this extra information.

I wonder what they would have found if they had asked the question this way:

B. Is your organization moving towards the adoption of a data standards system (such as HIBCC) in the next five years?

1. Yes – HIBCC
2. Yes – Other
3. No
4. Don’t Know

My bet is that the results would be nearly the same.

In general, perception surveys don’t deserve much weight. This one provides a perfect example of why, and this one question destroys any remaining credibility this survey could have had. For this reason, this survey contributed absolutely nothing to my own investigation into systems of standards and it answered none of my questions. That’s sad, because I’m sure there are many other people in the supply chain who are having the same thoughts right now, and we could use some solid, unbiased information about the pros and cons of each choice.

This report has inspired me to construct my own perception survey:

C. Which standards organization (such as GS1) is most likely to have directly or indirectly funded the survey that generated Question A.?

1. GS1
2. Other
3. No
4. Don’t Know

D. Which public university (such as the University of Arkansas) should be most embarrassed by the construction of Question A. and the conclusions drawn from it?

1. The University of Arkansas
2. Other
3. No
4. Don’t Know