The rapidly developing economy of India has led the product lifecycle to become shorter and allocation of task to become more precise. Due to changing times and upcoming industrial forces, the manufacturing sector has already taken the backseat, giving enough space to service sector. In order to meet the future challenges to empower quality management systems, the role of supply chain management integration comes into play. The main objective of the study is to identify whether supply chain management integration empowers quality management systems or not in the selected hospitals of Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula. The study also attempts to unblock the factors having a major impact on overall integration and overall quality management systems in the sample under study. Data collected through a structured questionnaire on 5-point Likert scale is analyzed with the help of various statistical techniques like reliability analysis, factor analysis, and regression analysis. The results indicate that supply chain management integration catalyzes the quality management system in healthcare sector. With the help of these findings, the hospitals can reframe their strategies related to supply chain management to identify areas in which they can improve the quality of service for efficient patient care.

The loss due to absence of an effective supply chain management or the benefit due to a well-managed supply chain highlights the importance of supply chain management. How good is the integration of supply chain matters a lot to every firm. The reduced inventories along the chain, better information sharing among the partners, lower costs, better customer service, efficient manufacturing and better trust among partners leading to a win-win situation can only be obtained through successful supply chain integration. This will result in improved quality in the creation of better facilities for product design research and enhanced customer service (Sinha, 2009). The integration of supply chain management systems in hospitals is an area under great discussion. As healthcare organizations need to develop greater strategic alliances along with zero defect information, the role of supply chain integration has been tremendously stressed on. Effective supply chain integration requires effective implementation, and implementation uninformed by strategy will at best produce little in the way of tangible benefits for the parties involved, and at worst be counterproductive and erode competitive advantage (Power, 2005).

Supply Chain Integration
According to Kaufman (1997), the purpose of supply chain management is to remove communication barriers and eliminate redundancies through coordinating, monitoring and controlling processes. Supply chain integration attempts to elevate the linkages within each component of the chain, to facilitate better decision making and to get all the pieces of the chain to interact in a more efficient way and thus create supply chain visibility and identify bottlenecks (Clancy, 1998 cited in Han, 2009).

Supply Chain Management Journal, Empowering Quality Management Systems, Supply Chain Management Integration,
A Survey of Select Hospitals, Chandigarh, Mohali, Panchkula.