Posted by Colleen Terry on Wed, Mar 31, 2010 @ 09:46 AM
No matter what decade you're in, reducing costs will never go out of style. And, no matter what your industry, reducing inventory levels can have compounding side affects. So, how do you accomplish one without adversly affecting the other?
While the healthcare industry has the added challenge of reducing costs, while improving patient safety and care, many hospitals have found success by implementing RFID solutions. Using RFID to track inventory and usage levels of individual products -in real-time- has proven to reduce specialty department inventory costs and improve patient safety. Can this be true? Here are 4 real world examples of inventory reductions in hospitals, after implementing RFID for the real-time tracking of critical medical supplies:
- A Midwest hospital identified a 25% reduction in inventory levels by comparing current target inventory levels against proposed levels based on actual product usage.
- A Northeast hospital was able to bring consigned and paid stock down from $400,000 to $100,000 in just a few months.
- A New York hospital has seen an overall inventory reduction of 33%, despite the fact that some SKU's actually increased.
- A Southeast hospital closed the gap of on-hand inventory levels and target inventory levels by almost 100%, by using real-time automated replenishment.
With more and more healthcare providers seeing black when it comes to inventory carrying costs, RFID is earning a prominent place in the hearts of hospital administrators.
Learn more about how RFID can improve the bottom line at your hospital, while improving patient care. Download case study.
Posted by Colleen Terry on Thu, Mar 11, 2010 @ 03:02 AM
IDN Summit just released the leading submissions of this year's Search for Supply Chain Excellence in Healthcare Awards. This elite award recognizes the leading healthcare systems in the US who are advancing patient care with cutting edge initiatives as judged by their healthcare peers. This award provides a substantive example of the powerful affect an optimized healthcare supply chain can have on cost containment and patient care.
While each of this year's 5 finalists focused on Strategic Sourcing, the range within was quite varied, including internalizing the supply chain, developing an e-sourcing auction, strategic partnership with a supplier, and more. The commonalities in the success of each of the winners is summarized:
- Clearly defined goals and objectives; a very specific problem area was identified, analyzed and then optimized.
- Firm buy-in from executive management and all parties across departments to be affected.
- Actively engage the Clinical stakeholders in the process; clinical support and feedback are paramount to ensuring success of the project which ultimately impacts the patients.
- Cooperatively work with suppliers, manufacturers and vendors to ensure best product, pricing and placement.
- Clinical process improvements and workflow optimization are direct outcomes of the above.
While these submissions only represent a small fraction of the opportunities and innovations for improvement, they demonstrate that significant cost savings and quality improvement opportunities abound in the supply chain arena. Why not take a look at your supply chain and choose a specific area of focus?
To help in deciding, read how this hospital achieved cost containment, patient safety and regulatory compliance, with the automation of product usage tracking and hospital systems integration through optimized inventory management and control.
Read each of the finalist submissions here.
Posted by Colleen Terry on Thu, Feb 25, 2010 @ 07:11 AM
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, and co-sponsor American Society for Quality, introduced the Stories of Success! case study program to share quality and patient safety improvement success stories.
The Stories of Success project is focused on linking the use of HIT with two major national initiatives to generate change, The Joint Commission National Patient Safety Goals and the National Priorities Partnership recommendations for national focus for improvement activities. Stories of Success! showcases outstanding accomplishments in the adoption and use of information technology to achieve improved patient safety, quality, effectiveness and efficiency. The chosen case studies highlight the fulfillment of the national priorities established by the National Priorities Partnership (NPP) and The Joint Commission's National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG).
Six "Tier 1" applicants (the most informative submissions aligned with the Stories of Success! purpose) were chosen, one of which highlights the use of RFID to manage inventory of critical medical supplies. Read the Mercy Medical Center case study and learn how RFID is improving patient safety in their Cath and EP labs.
"With the submissions we received, those who are using IT every day showed us and identified how technology helps support the six priorities of National Priorities Partnership and The Joint Commission's national patient safety goals and priorities. These from-the-field examples, focused on national quality and performance improvement, pinpointed technology's positive impact on the lives of patients," said Louis H. Diamond, M.B.Ch.B., F.A.C.P., F.C.P. (S.A.), chair of the HIMSS NPP/JC (National Priorities Partnership/The Joint Commission) Work Group that is leading this project.
Read about the Stories of Success project
Read the chosen case studies
To learn how RFID can help your facility improve patient safety, read the Mercy Medical Center case study.
Posted by Colleen Terry on Wed, Feb 17, 2010 @ 01:02 PM
Oftentimes, inventory management strategies are forgotten on the collegiate steps. However, the lack of visibility and control of inventory will surely get the MBA-types excited, but for the wrong reasons.
In a nutshell, inventory is money. Too much inventory and cash is tied up, affecting future purchases. Too little and you may be losing customers or paying a premium to rush orders. The absence of good inventory management practices could also lead to theft, damage, lost products, obsolescence and worse, a compromise to patient safety.
If you are experiencing any of the following, it may be time to rethink your inventory management strategy.
- Overstocks-too many products sitting on the shelf. If you don't have a method to understanding demand and usage, then you can easily be left paying for products that will never be used/reimbursed.
- Understocks/increased backorders-not enough product or product still in transit. If you don't have what you need, when you need it, then patient care levels may diminish.
- Product obsolescence-products exceeding their expiration life (or have been recalled) are still on the shelves. If there is no means to accurately track lot and serial #s of products, then inventory write-offs will increase and patient safety is compromised.
- Theft/Waste/Loss - the removal, authorized or not, of product from receivables inventory. If you don't have a way to monitor where product is stored, when it is used, and for whom, then charge capture rates decrease.
Preventing stock-outs without overstocking products requires a disciplined process and an information system that can dynamically manage this balance. Optimizing inventories can be accomplished with visibility and accuracy of information in the healthcare supply chain.
To learn how RFID can ensure the availability of the right products at the right time for the right person, read this case study.
Posted by Colleen Terry on Wed, Dec 16, 2009 @ 10:42 AM
The cost of medical advances continues to escalate, requiring labs to invest more dollars in products that promise to provide a higher standard of living for suffering patients. Inventory costs can quickly spiral out of control when the quantity and variety of products becomes more than a person can count and manage. Oftentimes, specialty procedure labs get caught with having too much product on hand, because the alternative has far greater consequences. This "just in case" inventory costs labs tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in carrying costs. To effectively manage the right mix of products, analyze your usage patterns closely and set reorder points accordingly.
Managing inventory in a special procedure lab such as the Cath lab, is a fine balancing act. Making sure the right products are available at the right time for the right procedure is the minimum every patient deserves. With the variety of products increasing and the expiration times decreasing, The Joint Commission implemented a time out procedure in response to improving patient safety. This requirement states that doctors must review the details of the procedure with the patient or a family member, including the type of procedure, exactly where on the body the procedure will take place and verification that the necessary products are available to perform the procedure. To ensure the right products are available establish par levels to optimize inventory by first understanding product specific usage patterns.
Effectively managing expiration dates and efficiently responding to product recalls can be a daunting task for any lab. To be in compliance, labs cannot have any product with an expiration date older than today's date or have a recalled product on the shelf, for doing so can put patients at risk. Thus, The Joint Commission inspects labs unannounced, ensuring labs are always attentive to expiration tracking and recall management to remain in compliance. Inventory should be managed in such a way that clinical staff have visibility into expiration dates to properly rotate product out before it's too late. An alert system should also be established to respond to recalls in a timely manner.
Summary: Cost containment, patient safety and regulatory compliance are 3 significant areas of concern that hospitals face on an ongoing basis. To improve upon these areas, an astute review of current inventory practices must be conducted to determine that there is proper visibility and accuracy of on-hand inventory levels and usage patterns to make decisions regarding inventory optimization. Taking the time to review hospital protocol and procedures in managing the overwhelming number of products used in a busy specialty lab can make the difference in a patient's well being, as well as the hospital's bottom line.
Learn how a mid-west hospital addressed all three of these concerns by automating their inventory management processes. Download an ROI white paper.