Investigating Factors Affecting Supply Chain Agility and Creating Competitive Advantage in Public Hospitals in Ilam Province

Introduction: Supply chain management in healthcare sector is of utmost importance due to its effect on individuals’ health status compared to other industries. In the current world economic situation wherein logical thinking should be based on lifetime costs of products ,as well as supply chain sources and processes, it is essential to have an agile supply chain to have a socio-environmental performance creating competitive advantage.   Materials & Methods: This study was a survey with a correlational design considering its methodology and purpose. The statistical population of this study included the staff of public hospitals in Ilam province, Iran; of which, 340 individuals were selected as the participants based on Krejcie and Morgan’s sample size determination table. Moreover, the SPSS Statistics Software and LISREL Software were used to analyze the data in this study.   Findings: The statistic of the Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin (KMO) index was equal to 0.844 implying sampling adequacy. Moreover, all the factors affecting supply chain agility had a normal distribution and the test statistic was larger than 1.96 for all the factors, suggesting their relationship with supply chain agility. The positive correlation between supply chain agility and competitive advantage was further confirmed based on the research findings.Additionally,the value of the goodness of fit index (GFI=0.96) showed the fit of the model and the test statistic of the model (T=9.60) revealed the significant impact of supply chain agility on creating the competitive advantage.   Discussion & Conclusions: The results of the present study demonstrated that the seven dimensions of computer-based technologies, flexibility, relationships with suppliers, use of modern technologies, collaborative partnerships, sensitivity to market, and responsiveness of demands had effects on supply chain agility in hospitals. Moreover, public hospitals in Ilam Province were endowed with competitive advantage in three dimensions of durability and permanence, retention, and opportunities; however, they lacked competitive advantage in the dimension of individuals’ unique capabilities.