Strengthening Pharmacy Supply Chains: Strategies to Enhance Safety, Reliability, and Resilience

The pharmaceutical supply chain is dynamic and nonlinear, requiring strategic oversight in which supply chain management (SCM) plays a critical role in pharmacy practice. SCM impacts medication availability, patient safety, and pharmacy operations. It is a large, complex system consisting of global manufacturers, distributors, raw material suppliers, regulators, pharmacies, hospitals, other health care providers, and patients.

Pharmacist effectiveness in SCM is critical to mitigate disruptions that could compromise patient care.¹ SCM is pivotal to meeting the demand of patients while complying with strict rules and keeping costs down for pharmacy and patient. Effective SCM ensures reliability, safety, and speed in procuring safe and cost-effective medications while optimizing pharmacy revenues.

Supply chain managers face complex challenges, such as regulatory rules that can defer meeting patient demands.² At the manufacturing level, major supply chain challenges or issues include inaccurate demand forecasting, long production and delivery times, high inventory costs, and poor collaboration with suppliers.² When forecasting is inaccurate, manufacturers may produce too much or too little of a medication. Having an excess or shortage of a medication affects pharmacy inventory, which can lead to other issues that impact pharmacy operations and disrupt continuity of care.² Solving one problem or issue incites other challenges; for example, increasing inventory to avoid shortages may create other problems and issues relating to higher costs, storage issues, or medication expiry.²

Utilizing a supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model helps illustrate how small problems earlier in the supply chain can create larger issues downstream.² A SCOR model can help with organizing supply chain performance into reliability, responsiveness, flexibility, cost, and asset management. Applying a SCOR model can help identify and evaluate trade-offs and guide strategic decisions. Other strategic decisions include lean management, which streamlines workflows and minimizes waste, while a Six Sigma approach would focus on reducing variability and defects in medication ordering, dispensing, and inventory processes through data-driven analysis.³ Incorporating evidence-based strategies helps to prevent medication shortages, optimizes supply chain processes, and enforces pharmacist resilience.³

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, community and hospital pharmacies have had to adjust their SCM strategies to respond to sudden spikes in demand as well as critical and expected shortages. Pharmacists are taking on an active role by closely monitoring inventory, adjusting purchases, and prioritizing essential medications such as sedatives, anticoagulants, vaccines, and drugs used for symptomatic relief of respiratory infections. Their involvement helps improve forecast accuracy. Indicators such as the mean absolute deviation and mean squared error evaluate forecasting accuracy, which indicates that pharmacist-led inventory management is effective.⁴ When pharmacists take on an active role in managing inventory and are actively engaged and involved with the supply chain, their contribution in an important decision-making role reaps positive operational advantage and access to medications, especially during public health emergencies.

Pharmacists’ knowledge of and ability to engage with SCM technology have become increasingly important. Technological advances have assisted with improved drug traceability, counterfeit prevention, regulatory compliance, and patient safety.⁵ Pharmacy managers must keep ahead of the pace. Some current pharmaceutical supply chains lack visibility, transparency, and security. Implementing blockchain technology provides a level of tamper-proof, shared, end-to-end tracking systems that connect various stages and networks within the supply chain. Blockchain will greatly improve the handling and dispensing of medications, although it has its own challenges, such as high costs, data concerns, privacy concerns, and widespread adoption. If barriers to new technology can be handled and adaptation is synergistic within a coexisting pharmacy operation, blockchain can greatly further improve supply chain safety and reliability.⁵

Facing challenges requires strong communication and coordination to maintain consistent medication access. Effective SCM in pharmacy is essential to ensure safety, compliance, and timely delivery of medications. An optimized SCM not only reduces waste and added operational costs but can also enhance visibility and resilience across the supply chain process. Ultimately, a well-managed SCM with proper oversight supports improved patient outcomes, strengthens medication safety, and reinforces the pharmacist’s role as a key player in medication access.

Pharmacists have demonstrated measurable impacts over the years in SCM, from public health crises to pandemics and disaster events. During the COVID-19 pandemic, pharmacists, alongside other health care professionals, helped maintain medication distribution and preserve access to essential medications during a time of stress and uncertainty.^4,6 In rural communities, pharmacists have adapted by managing shortages and maintaining continuity of care when resources are low.⁷ During disaster events, pharmacists contribute to preparedness through hazard planning, emergency distributions, and postdisaster continuity of care.^8,9 Historical disaster responses include Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Australian bushfires in 2019 that highlighted the importance of pharmacist involvement in managing operational logistics, leveraging real-time demand forecasting, serving as regulatory coordinators, and cultivating leadership capacity.⁹ Collectively, these examples further demonstrate the essential role of pharmacists in SCMs.

Pharmacists bridge clinical knowledge with operational logistics. To expand pharmacists’ impact in SCM decision-making, pharmacists can strengthen their competencies through continuing education courses and professional development workshops. Resources include formal certification through courses from the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education, training directly through distributors/vendors, and health care industry training focused on various areas of the supply chain. The Association for Health Care Resource & Materials Management also offers supply chain education pathways. Taking advantage of the educational opportunities may help pharmacists hone their abilities in risk analysis, demand management, and emergency preparedness planning while greatly contributing to the pharmaceutical SCM. SCM is indeed an area where pharmacists can play an increasingly important role in public health as we continue to expect the unexpected.

REFERENCES

1. Fri PL, Higgins SE, Newman R, Bussing J. Supply chain and inventory management. In: Desselle SP, Moczygemba LR, Chen AM, Hughes S, Garcia-Cardenas V. eds. Pharmacy Management: Essentials for All Practice Settings, A Global Perspective 2026 Update. McGraw Hill; 2025.

2. Moosivand A, Rajabzadeh Ghatari A, Rasekh HR. Supply chain challenges in pharmaceutical manufacturing companies: using qualitative system dynamics methodology. Iran J Pharm Res. 2019;18(2):1103-1116. doi:10.22037/ijpr.2019.2389

3. Sallam M. Enhancing hospital pharmacy operations through lean and Six Sigma strategies: a systematic review. Cureus. 2024;16(3):e57176. doi:10.7759/cureus.57176

4. Jorge VM, Esteban ZM, Bruno SA, Yeralin HF, Pablo DJ. Implementation of supply management strategies by the pharmacy service in general hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. Explor Res Clin Soc Pharm. 2022;7:100161. doi:10.1016/j.rcsop.2022.100161

5. Akram W, Joshi R, Haider T, et al. Blockchain technology: a potential tool for the management of pharma supply chain. Res Social Admin Pharm. 2024;20(6):156-164. doi:10.1016/j.sapharm.2024.02.014

6. Ammar MA, Tran LJ, McGill B, et al. Pharmacists leadership in a medication shortage response: illustrative examples from a health system response to the COVID-19 crisis. J Am Coll Clin Pharm. 2021;4(9):1134-1143. doi:10.1002/jac5.1443

7. Carpenter DM, Hastings T, Westrick S, et al. Rural community pharmacies' preparedness for and responses to COVID-19. Res Social Adm Pharm. 2021;17(7):1327-1331. doi:10.1016/j.sapharm.2020.10.008

8. Ahmad Hamdi AH, Hatah E, Bakry MM, Basari AH, Hamdi NA. Operations management of pharmaceutical supply during preparedness and disaster response: a scoping review. Int J Dis Risk Reduc. 2024;103:104296. doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2024.104296

9. Schumacher L, Dhif Y, Bonnabry P, Widmer N. Managing the COVID-19 health crisis: a survey of Swiss hospital pharmacies. BMC Health Serv Res. 2023;23(1):1134. doi:10.1186/s12913-023-10105-6