Abstract

The supply system of medicines in primary health care in Chile has a unique nationwide provider and does not consider multilevel demand for calculating the procurement, generating inventory surplus. This paper proposes a regular supply policy review that uses a probabilistic demand forecasting modeling the dependence structure, individually and through bi-varied copulas, coordinating demand multilevel minimizing costs associated with the purchase, maintenance and storage. The validation of the proposal was conducted on a sample of 104 medicines supplied by three years in a Chilean family health center. When comparing the current policy with the proposal, such weekly decline a 8.22% in purchasing costs, a 95.47% cost of ordering and a 54.6% of total costs.