Research suggests that as many as 440,000 patients die annually as a result of preventable medical errors, and that many others suffer significant, lasting morbidity and quality-of-life implications1. The healthcare supply chain plays a key support role, here. Recent findings indicate that hospitals report better supply chain management leads to better quality of care and supports patient safety.
As you celebrate Patient Safety Awareness Week, consider these four supply chain opportunities, and how overcoming obstacles – with solutions like automated technology – can help support patient care.
1. Manage expired and recalled items
Did you know that one in four hospital staff report an expired or recalled product being used on a patient? It’s imperative for healthcare organizations to stay ahead of device recalls and looming product expirations before they occur to support patient safety. At the same time, it’s difficult for tightly staffed procedural areas to keep up with monitoring all products to ensure that they don’t expire on the shelf or stay on the shelf after a recall.
Tip: Automate product tracking and utilization so that supply chain leaders are alerted to expirations and recalls as soon as possible, and clinicians can be confident that patients will get the supplies they need.
2. Optimize clinical workflows
Nurses typically spend as much as 30% of their time searching for products. A recent survey found that, if clinical hospital staff could reallocate this time, most would spend it with patients. I’ve observed that when caregivers have sufficient time to care for patients – rather than forage for products – employee satisfaction increases which, in turn, supports patient satisfaction.
Tip: Streamline time-consuming supply chain tasks to empower hospital staff to work more efficiently and to focus on direct, patient care responsibilities. Effective automation can help eliminate manual and human errors while reducing redundant process steps.
3. Maintain accurate charge capture
There are many reasons hospital supply chain leaders should view accurate charge capture as patient care tool, one being that accurate charge capture supports patient safety . When hospital staff have the ability to track every product to each specific case and patient, they can also match item recalls to an individual patient. Identifying and recovering these items is a critical safety process for both the patient and for the hospital.
Tip: Streamline the charge capture processes during a procedure to mitigate human errors. For example, rather than manually tracking each product used in a procedure, use automated technology combined with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to track products. In this case, staff can simply wave an item by an RFID-reader to assign it to the patient’s billing record.
4. Leverage data analytics
According to a recent survey, more than half (57 percent) of hospital staff recall a time when a physician did not have a product that was needed for a patient during a procedure; most concerning, this same study found that 18 percent are aware of a patient being harmed for not having the right supplies at the right time. It’s possible that events that negatively impact patient care can be avoided when clinicians know where a product is in the supply chain and how easily they can located the product when needed. This requires full supply chain transparency.
Tip: Don’t rely on intuition, emotional stocking, or order history to determine how much and when to order products. Leverage automated tracking technology to acquire real-time product data, and integrate this system with cloud-based analytics to form a strong supply chain business intelligence strategy that allows you to access, analyze and collect vast amounts of supply chain data – such as order history, utilization and expiry alerts. Doing so will help ensure that the right products are in the right place for the right patient at the right time.
About Cardinal Health Supply Chain Survey
This study was fielded Oct. 19 - Nov. 4, 2016, using an online survey methodology. The samples were drawn from SERMO’s Online Respondent Panel of Health Care Providers, which includes over 600,000 medical professionals in the United States. The study included 403 respondents total, including frontline healthcare providers in hospitals (n=201), service line leaders in hospitals (n=100), and hospital/supply chain administrators (n=102). All survey data on file at Cardinal Health.