Hospital logistics is viewed as a vital part of a hospital that is in charge of purchasing, receiving, stock management, etc. It accounts up to 46 % of hospital budget, which is considered as a very substantial proportion, especially in the context of budgetary restrictions applied to all organizations including hospitals. The literature contains different definitions of hospital logistics as well as its activities, which vary depending on authors and studies. This paper tries to meet the need to clarify the logistics filed within health care institutions, and covers essentially its activities, their organization and management.

Firstly, we aim to determine logistics manifestations within hospitals and to identify exhaustively its activities. Secondly, we will focus on the organization and management of these activities in order to point out the department or service that handles them, through a comparison between various countries including France, Quebec, the United States and Morocco. The methodology followed is a literature review based on the analysis of more than 60 papers, mostly published between 2000 and 2017. The selected articles cover some topics related to hospital logistics, and deal with the activities and the responsibilities of the logistics department. Due to the diversity of hospital logistics activities, we observe that different departments are involved in their management and some of them are outsourced.