Healthcare Purchasing News: Looking forward to smarter storage systems

Excerpts from Healthcare Purchasing News September 2009 article "Looking forward to smarter storage systems."

Looking forward to smarter storage systems
Lean economic times make way for Lean management
by Rick Dana Barlow 

Selected cable and reality television programs gamely broadcast closet clutterbugs to viewer amazement and amusement with healthcare facilities being no exception.

In fact, cart- and equipment-clogged hallways in hospitals have emerged as standard video fare for any media organization highlighting healthcare reform issues, documentaries on patient care or exposés on inefficient operations.

With the plethora of storage options available to healthcare facilities today, as well as the phalanx of anal-retentive (and sometimes costly) organizational experts a telephone call or e-mail away, administrators can fall back on few excuses for asset and stock disorder – particularly if you discount the act of patient care and dismiss the reams of paperwork.

Still, if supply chain management professionals could reconstruct and redesign the ideal storage systems for their clinical, inventory and sterile processing areas, how would they do it? Online computer-aided design programs? Face-to-face conversations with plenty of hand gestures? What would they include in the mix? Hybrid stationary shelving with detachable mobile units? Automated moveable shelves?

Healthcare Purchasing News posed that to the professionals, asking them specifically to highlight strategies for organizing and storing supplies and equipment within a facility for more effective supply chain management that arguably should lead to improved patient care. Those strategies involve exploring recent and near-future developments in storage system applications and capabilities that will contribute to performance improvement, in addition to smart planning.

Storage: IT is it
The common denominator underlying many product developments in storage systems today involves less of the size configurations and cubby hole offerings and more of the information technology varieties helping to run the system.

In short, automation is driving storage imagination.

Grand Rapids, MI-based Stanley InnerSpace promoted its Internet capabilities that wed the Web-based clinical inventory management system with its array of storage cart offerings, fortified by radio frequency identification (RFID) for supply tracking.

"[Stanley InnerSpace] created a storage system that can tell you who took what supply and when and what patient it was charged to," said Shannon Kennedy, marketing manager. "RFID storage solutions, such as SpaceTRAX plus RFID, work to ensure that your most expensive items are being charged to the patient every single time. It’s difficult for any one clinical department to tell us how much inventory is lost or unaccounted for each year, but our estimation of captured charges compared over previous months shows that departments are losing up to 10 percent or more in unaccounted inventory. If a department can reclaim those missed charges, they can easily save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually."

The company is scheduled to launch this month its InnerSpace ILS "Intelligent Locking System" product for access and security that is "engineered to save money, time and headaches," Kennedy noted. ILS is a wireless tracking and access system that allows cart access programming from any computer, eliminating the need for individual cart programming. In fact, user information can be administered from any Internet-connected PC, she added. Internal studies have shown "ILS can administer 50 users on 100 carts in 15 minutes," she indicated. At the same time, users can be deactivated from all carts at one time.

Tips for decluttering storage areas
Nurses spend way too much of their time searching for needed supplies and putting stuff away.

So says more than 1,600 nurses from critical care, operating room and patient floors who participated in a survey by distributor Owens & Minor Inc. and Marquette University, the results of which were revealed and discussed at the annual conference of the Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management in Tampa in late July.

Depending on whether you ask nurses or materials management professionals, the problems either stem from the inventory process itself or the storage products they’re using or even both.

As a result, Healthcare Purchasing News Senior Editor Rick Dana Barlow tapped seven storage system executives for some "take-to-the-bank decluttering/organizational strategies" they would recommend in context of a recessionary economy. Here’s what they suggested.

• Lean – Once traditionally thought of as a Japanese manufacturing process, Lean principles are making their way into healthcare. Google the words "Lean in Healthcare" and you will receive over 400,000 search results. We are applying Lean principles to how we look at a department’s storage process and incorporating these tactics into lab setups and so much more. For instance, one Lean process called "5S" is quite basic, but all too often overlooked. The 5 S’ are Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize and Sustain. We can walk a customer through the process of administering these 5 S’ and how to make it part of its culture by focusing on the fifth S – Sustain. Supply storage must be reevaluated weekly, monthly and yearly to ensure that efficiencies are constantly improving. Don’t just buy a cabinet, fasten it to the wall, and think that your storage problems are solved. It’s a continual reshaping process.

• Modular Storage – It’s at the heart of what we do. It’s not a new concept, but one in which decision makers are sometimes reluctant to purchase because of price when compared to traditional casework or wire racking. However, when you consider the efficiencies of a well-thought out design, the savings are almost immediate. Labs that are clean and well-organized, right down to every last individual storage tray, help to improve staff satisfaction and ultimately improve employee retention. It’s hard to put a price tag on soft benefits. Additionally, the use of modular storage in new hospital construction helps facilities achieve a [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] credit for sustainability, as modular storage works to reduce a facility’s overall global footprint. Modular storage systems are easily changed and reconfigured as the department’s needs change over time. 

• Clinical Inventory Systems – Don’t wait for your hospital information technology department to develop a solution, don’t look for your hemodynamic system to learn the ways of inventory management, and don’t try to use a materials management system designed to manage bulk supplies to track your high-dollar physician preference supplies. The right clinical inventory system will not only solve your inventory woes, but will simultaneously act as your implant log, track outcomes, monitor recall items, and so much more. By implementing a clinical inventory system with a proven ROI achieved in less than a year, you can capture wasted dollars and add to your bottom line in a matter of months. Monitor expiration dates, item usage to set appropriate PAR levels, and more.

• Quit Comfort Buying – We all know that big money spends are earmarked for consigned inventory, but the best inventory management advice is not to order it — if it’s not needed — in the first place. Build confidence in your clinical inventory system and put an end to just-in-case or comfort buying. Trimming the fat from your supplies will ultimately open up more storage space, so when a new procedure is added to the department, there will be no question as to where the supplies will fit.  

• Mobile Storage continues to be a popular option for procedure-specific storage. Stock all the supplies for a particular procedure in one full-size procedure cart instead of stocking supplies in multiple procedure rooms. Carts can then be easily moved from room to room and restocked at the end of the day or first thing in the morning. This saves your inventory coordinator from walking unnecessarily all over the department to restock. Eliminating wasted travel time is part of yet another Lean strategy. 

                                  
– Shannon Kennedy, marketing manager, Stanley InnerSpace, Grand Rapids, MI