WaveMark reports show all items used in an encounter along with their CDM number. In addition, any product taken from a cabinet but not confirmed used in a procedure can be reconciled. The ease of capturing all supply charges by simply waving the item at the RFID reader in the procedure room and the ability to audit for completeness ensures complete and accurate charging. In addition, supply charges can be automatically applied to a patient charge in the hospital billing system. Predicting improved revenue from more accurate charge capture depends on many factors including baseline collections, payer mix, outpatient/inpatient percentages, and reimbursement contracts however, making sure all products are properly charged can result in significant revenue improvements ranging from $40,000 to $200,000 and more.

Physician and case-level supply capture provides real-time, accurate reporting of all supplies used along with the costs of the supplies for improved analysis of utilization and cost trends.

Products in specialty areas can be bought, consigned, or purchased in bulk but which strategy is the most cost-effective? Does it make more sense to set a price per device or to go with one prime vendor for high value products? WaveMark’s analytics uses real-time data capture and sophisticated algorithms for informed decision-making. A skilled negotiator will find the information in WaveMark can save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. If the decision is to go with a bulk buy, tracking tools allow users to see the current state of a bulk buy (“what is the value of product still on hand from the bulk buy I did last month?”) in real-time. This provides the tools necessary for ensuring that bulk buy discounts are fully realized without excessive cash tied up over time in unused products.

Cabinets report their contents every 20 minutes. If a product is taken from the cabinet it is automatically shown as missing until it is waved in a case or placed back on the cabinet. Knowing this information has helped hospitals eliminate shrinkage by 1-2% of all inventory expenditures which is often between $40,000 and $100,000. This also ensures that cross-departmental borrowing can be clearly documented and budgetary adjustments made before it is too late to figure out what happened to the missing items.

WaveMark provides suggestions at the line-item level for optimal par levels, including data that is important to clinicians such as maximum use of an item in one day. Usually these new inventory levels result in a 20-30% reduction of on-hand owned stock which can provide a one-time savings of $20,000 to $150,000.

Products that are owned and expire on the shelf have to be written off. WaveMark gives expiration alerts to ensure that this doesn’t happen. In addition, customers routinely use the expiration date and activity report to find stagnant product that can be swapped with manufacturers for fresher stock or for credit. These savings can range from $40,000 to $100,000. This benefit recurs every year.

Very often, the consignment agreements are not easily available to inventory personnel in the specialty areas and as a result inventory may creep up until it is significantly over consigned par (that is now owned by the hospital) and, conversely, may dip below consigned par levels necessitating a quarter-end buy that was unanticipated and causes budgetary problems. WaveMark helps hospitals stay on par, not over or under. The tools also provide a useful tool for hospitals and manufacturers to jointly fine-tune consigned par levels to match usage patterns.

Being able to see market share of both on hand and usage of high value products allows users to both design advantageous agreements with vendors but also to keep tabs on market share trends once the agreements are in place.

Clinicians can pull products off the RFID-enabled cabinets and thereby decrement the inventory – no scanning or button pushing is necessary. When the doctor decides what to use for the patient treatment, the clinician waves the tagged product at the Point of Service station, placed conveniently wherever that product documentation generally occurs. Products not chosen to be used at that time are simply returned to the shelf and automatically read back into inventory. Forgetting to wave the product results in a “Missing” alert on the Dashboard to catch the exceptions in real-time.

For clinical documentation systems that can use a barcode scanner for product capture, WaveMark provides an automated feed into those systems so that waving a product at the Point of Service reader at the time of patient consumption also sends the message to the clinical system that the item was used. Depending on the system, lot, serial and expiration date may also be fed to the clinical system. WaveMark also provides interfaces to clinical systems and to billing systems for automated charge capture.

WaveMark automates the counting of on hand inventory. Then compares the on hand amount to the par level and what is already on order for that product. The resulting difference is then placed in a requisition and can be released to a Materials system for processing. This eliminates the problem of over-ordering when multiple people order products. It also is an improvement over use-and-replace systems since those rely on the documentation of usage to be accurate. By setting appropriate par levels based on usage history of an item (see financial benefits – reduced inventory), the user can take control of the inventory levels in the department. Users can link a serial number of a used item to the requisition, if necessitated by the vendor for replacement. The time savings from automated ordering amount to several hours a day.

WaveMark saves administrators many hours when it comes time to provide information for budgetary reporting on such things as variances, bulk buy status, and case level supply utilization. This data can be hard to find and more difficult to validate and therefore valuable opportunities for improved financial results are missed. WaveMark’s easy to use web-based reports and accurate data allow for information that can lead to improved decision making and a better understanding of underlying trends.

At the end of every month, specialty areas use valuable staff time for finding and removing expiring product. Even with these manual efforts, products still expire on the shelf. WaveMark is reading each box, with its expiration date and model/serial number every 20 minutes. This allows users to run an expiration report to see what products are expiring and exactly where they are located. The report can also be filtered by manufacturer and emailed to a manufacturer sales rep if the items are on consignment.

Knowing exactly what is on the shelf in real time is a unique characteristic of an RFID-enabled system. This capability ensures that the products necessary for delivery safe and cost-effective patient care are always available when and where they are needed. This provides another benefit for busy clinicians – peace of mind knowing that what they need is there when they need it.

To increase clinician efficiency many specialty areas place high value products in the procedure rooms. However, to achieve the desired goal of efficiency requires the items to be restocked exactly as desired. WaveMark cabinets are reporting their contents every 20 minutes so by setting optimal room par levels at the product level the cabinets can report back exactly what needs to be restocked with no manual counting necessary.

Knowing exactly what is on the shelf in real time is a unique characteristic of an RFID-enabled system. This capability ensures that the products necessary for delivery safe and cost-effective patient care are always available when and where they are needed. This provides another benefit for busy clinicians – peace of mind knowing that what they need is there when they need it

For clinical documentation systems that can use a barcode scanner for product capture, WaveMark provides an automated feed into those systems so that waving a product at the Point of Service reader at the time of patient consumption also sends the message to the clinical system that the item was used. Lot, serial and expiration date may also be able to be fed to these systems. In addition, WaveMark can send the information to the clinical system such as EMR or HIS and to the patient billing system ensuring that the product is captured in all relevant systems with a simple wave at the time of usage.

By assigning products to the patient at the time of use, users collect data that can be sorted, graphed, analyzed. While other systems can do this, WaveMark’s real-time reporting allows for data to be reviewed within hours of the event. If requested, this information can also be sent into other systems such as decision support systems.

WaveMark is reading the products’ expiration and lot/serial numbers every 20 minutes as they sit on the shelf. This allows for real-time and scheduled alerts on products that must be removed from the shelf. Products that are expired or on a class 1 recall and being read by a cabinet create alerts on the dashboard, and, if run by the point of service reader, also alert the user at the point of use that this product should not be used.