Prioritizing Determinants of Drug sustainable supply chain management in Hospital Pharmacies

Drug supply chain management is recognized as one of the main factors influencing the performance of the health sector. The aim of this study was to prioritize factors affecting sustainable drug supply chain management in pharmacies of teaching hospitals affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences.

This applied, cross-sectional study was performed by using Delphi and fuzzy Demetel methods. To identify the factors affecting the management of sustainable drug supply chain in the pharmacies in question, a questionnaire was designed based on the supply-chain operation reference model and was distributed among experts to collect their opinions. The sampling method was purposeful. In the next step, fuzzy Delphi method was used to identify the main factors and then, fuzzy Dimatel method was applied to determine and rank the Cause and Effect actors.

According to the findings, 23 factors were identified in five dimensions(reliability,accountability, flexibility, costs and asset management). The factors consisted of 6 exogenous and 17 endogenous factors, 10 of which were Cause factors and 7 were Effect factors.

The most important factors identified in the present study were related to asset management and the highest number of factors were pertinent to accountability, indicating the poor response of the management system of the studied pharmacies. Therefore, addressing these two dimensions is more recommended in the management of pharmacies.