In my experience, limitations in resources are a critical reality in healthcare, despite our mission to save lives with life-saving drugs. Therefore, it is essential to prioritize resources based on urgency and impact. Effective strategies include leveraging data to forecast demand, implementing lean management principles, fostering cross-functional collaboration, and promoting preventive care to reduce future resource strain. In the pharmaceutical sector, aligning production and supply chain decisions with clinical priorities ensures the right medicines reach the right patients at the right time.

In most cases, aside from ERs, it comes from over booking. As leaders in healthcare, we need to stop pushing the 110% capacity rule. From both a clinical and long term business perspective it makes more sense to allow for overages in clinical time with patients and as everyone knows, there is really very little downtime even when not seeing patients.

5 expert tips for allocating scarce resources and investments in health systems: (1) Clear Vision: Establish & clearly communicate strategic pillars (i.e., what you want to achieve). (2) Consistent Framework: Use a decision-making framework to determine which option best achieves the vision from #1. Account for strategically important intangible factors too. (3) Cash is King: Seek alternative revenue sources; prefer financially accretive projects. (4) Engage Stakeholders: Involve key stakeholders early in decisions and through execution. (5) Execution Focus: Assess upfront implementation risks & plans, including difficulty, adoption ease, & education needs.