Adopting the Prime Vendor Program to manage Marine Corps authorized medical/dental allowance lists

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the ongoing problem of replacing expiring pharmaceutical and medical/surgical items stocked in Marine Corps Authorized Medical/Dental Allowance Lists (AMALs/ADALs). AMALs/ADALs allocated to the Fleet Marine Force are classified as Prepositioned War Reserve (PWR), required to be immediately available for combat support. Due to the short shelf-life of these items, maintaining this PWR creates excessive financial losses, costing the Marine Corps approximately eight million dollars per year. In February 1993, the Department of Defense implemented the Prime Vendor Program to eliminate excessive hospital inventories. This form of Just-in-Time inventory management improves the quality of health care by eliminating long procurement leadtimes and losses due to expirations and overstocking of pharmaceutical and medical/surgical supplies. This thesis analyzes the financial and logistical benefits that can be achieved by extending the Prime Vendor Program to include maintaining AMALs/ADALs. Our analysis shows that, by adopting the Prime Vendor Program the Marine Corps could realize a potential savings of over $4.5 million per year without reducing readiness