Implementing structure and control over unofficial inventories in a multispecialty group practice

Materiel managers have been in control of most aspects of the supply chain except for the inventories of the end users, which account for 70 percent of the inventory supply dollars. When the Materials Manager at Lexington Clinic in Lexington, Kentucky, was approached by the Clinic's Chief Executive Officer to implement cost containment measures, the Materials Manager seized the opportunity to implement a six-step program aimed at controlling those supply dollars. Through requisition training, enforcing approval levels, limiting the number of requisitioners, and establishing par levels on floor inventories, the clinic's "unofficial" inventory supply dollars were reduced by 7 percent in the first 12 departments where the par levels were established. The program was hailed as a tremendous success and a positive experience for everyone, from nurses to warehouse clerks.     

Could a clinical mistake land you in jail?

Internist Gerald Einaugler is facing 52 consecutive weekends in New York's notorious Riker's Island jail because he was slow to hospitalize a terminally ill nursing-home patient. A jury convicted the Brooklyn physician last June of reckless endangerment and willful neglect, both misdemeanors. He has lost his privileges at a hospital and two nursing homes, and has been disqualified as a Medicaid provider. He may also lose is medical license. What he considered conservative management, a prosecutor saw as criminal neglect, a deliberate attempt to thwart appropriate treatment.     

Book Reviews

W.T. Woo, B. Glassburner and Anwar Nasution, Macroeconomic Policies, Crises, and Long-term Growth in Indonesia, 1965–90, Comparative Economic Studies, The World Bank, Washington DC, 1994, pp. xiii + 216. Paper: $13.95.

Hal Hill (ed.), Indonesia's New Order; The Dynamics of Socio-Economic Transformation, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1994, pp. xxxv + 364. Paper: A$29.95.

J. Thomas Lindblad (ed.), New Challenges in the Modern Economic History of Indonesia: Proceedings of the First Conference on Indonesia 's Modern Economic History, Jakarta, October 1–4, 1991, Programme of Indonesian Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, 1993, pp. viii + 306.

Thee Kian Wie, Explorations in Indonesia's Economic History, Lembaga Penerbit Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, 1994, pp. xv + 187.

Nancy Lee Peluso, Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992, pp. xv + 321.

Effendi Pasandaran, Agus Pakpahan, Edwin B. Oyer and Norman Uphoff (eds), Poverty Alleviation with Sustainable Agricultural and Rural Development in Indonesia, Published jointly by the Center for Agro-Socioeconomic Research (CASER) (Bogor), and the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD) (Ithaca), Bogor 1992, pp. vi + 233.

Eric Thorbecke and Theodore van der Pluijm, Rural Indonesia: Socio-Economic Development in a Changing Environment, IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) Studies in Rural Development no. 3, New York University Press, New York, 1993, pp. xxix + 360.

Niels Mulder, Inside Southeast Asia: Thai, Javanese and Filipino Interpretations of Everyday Life, Duang Kamol, Bangkok, 1992, pp. xiii + 178.

M.C. Ricklefs, War, Culture and Economy in Java, 1677–1726: Asian and European Imperialism in the Early Kartasura Period, ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series no. 24, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993, pp. xi + 425. A$29.95.

Ken Young, Islamic Peasants and the State: The 1908 Anti-Tax Rebellion in West Sumatra, Yale Southeast Asia Studies Monograph 40, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, New Haven, pp. xviii + 361.

Saya Shiraishi and Takashi Shiraishi (eds), The Japanese in Colonial Southeast Asia, Translation Series, Translation of Contemporary Japanese Scholarship on Southeast Asia, vol. 3, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, 1993, pp. 172.