Ensuring safe delivery of medical supplies is very important for effective patient care. Not just that, hospitals’ budgets, strategies and overall management becomes difficult to handle when critical supplies are mishandled. Therefore choosing the medical courier company is a very critical decision on which a management’s success essentially depends. When you select your medical courier company make sure it handles drugs, medications, instruments and apparatus just the way they ought to. Here are some tips to help you ensure safety in delivering medical supplies.
Proper packaging of medicines:
A lot of care must be taken when packaging medicines and drugs. These are very dangerous substances that can be harmful if mishandled. Therefore, medicines must be packaged in tamper-free containers. Packaging must also be child-resistant. Moreover it must be good enough to protect against humidity and sunlight.
Optimum temperature maintenance:
When shipping drugs and medicines it is important to maintain optimum temperature that sufficiently protects the ingredients of a medicine. Refrigerated storage compartments enable that. Insulated medical containers also enable protection of medicines during the delivery.
Handling of instruments:
Surgical instruments and tools are required by doctors and medical staff in the hospitals and laboratories to help cure patients and save lives. These instruments are extremely important as well as fragile in their capacity.
They need exceptional care and packaging in order to preserve their functionality. These instruments get in contact with human body. Therefore they must be completely clean and safe to use when being unpacked for the first time. Vacuum-sealed packaging can ensure that these instruments are tightly sealed leaving no room for tears or holes. Sterile bags give additional protection to these critical medical supplies.
As much as important it is to package these supplies protectively, safe transportation is equally relevant. You need a controlled temperature to transport these goods safely safeguarding against humidity. Humidity can possibly contaminate the equipment through moisture and condensation as bacteria and virus can inhabit in such conditions.
Transporting medical equipment:
The heavy machineries, ventilators, scanners and other important equipment that you see in the hospital are transported to the destination with great care and precision. Their countless small as well as large components need to be handled attentively in order to safeguard the equipment against any damage. Such equipment must be loaded under professional supervision.
Parts that need assembly must be placed in compartments that protect them from even a dent. Likewise when unloading them from the delivery van utmost attention must be paid that no part is damaged.
Collaborating with all the supply chain partners:
For optimum quality delivery it is very important to collaborate and partner with all the supply chain stakeholders. This includes sharing data that is relevant for the other supply chain partners that ensures delivery of finest products to the final customer.
Collaboration among partners such as manufacturers, regulatory authorities, hospitals and pharmacies helps identify problems and opportunities that focus on improving the shelf life, safety and efficacy of drugs and medicines. Research and findings with regard to speedier and safer delivery of bulky equipment that helps the whole of industry to prosper also signify how collaboration and pooling of information can be advantageous.
Using technology to monitor delivery process:
Technology is one of the critical factors that help evolve supply chain particularly in medicine field. Given the short shelf life and fragile nature of drugs, equipment and medical instruments; technology plays an important role in preserving the usefulness of medical products.
Using technology to record and respond accordingly to information such as climate and temperature changes in certain environments is one important use of technology in this industry. This is very useful measure to improve the product’s efficacy and usefulness.
Complying with policies and standards:
Standardization in supply chain management is very important tool to improve efficiency of the processes involved. That is why there are certain policies and standards issued by government authorities to preserve the supplies’ utility. It is in the best interest of a supply company to devise internal processes and procedures in accordance with these standards.
There must be SOPs to ensure smooth functioning of supply chain management. This way detecting defects and problems becomes easier, hence leading to taking corrective actions more conveniently.
