CSC White Paper - Curing Operational Inefficiency How real ... - himss

Curing Operational Inefficiency
How real-time locating technology brings a cure to asset
management headaches
©2010 Intelligent InSites, Inc. All rights reserved.
TM
Enabling the Real-Time Enterprise
Part of the Intelligent InSites
White Paper Series.

...the importance of
finding equipment or
inventory increases
even more when it’s
needed to provide timecritical
care...
When asked to perform a “health screening” of an
average hospital, you would most likely come back
with a diagnosis of “chronic operational inefficiency.”
The symptoms of this syndrome are easy to detect, even
by an inexperienced specialist in the field of Lean or Six
Sigma. Thousands of assets, such as IV pumps, wheelchairs,
and other medical equipment move constantly
throughout the facility. How easy it is for staff to locate
them, know their status, or the level of their utilization?
As suspected, the root problem of operational inefficiency lies in the
limited visibility into operational performance. This white paper evaluates
the most common problems in the area of asset management
and the way Real-Time Locating Systems (RTLS) can address them.
The nurse’s headache: “Where is the IV pump?”
Hospital employees spend 23% to 32% of their time searching for
123
equipment – that’s more than two hours per shift per nurse!
Although they may not see this as wasted time, this translates to
less time spent with patients. The importance of finding equipment
or inventory increases greatly when it’s needed to provide
time-critical care. In situations such as cardiopulmonary arrest, the
defibrillator, medications, and other resuscitation materials need to
be available immediately in order to facilitate successful recovery of
the patient, giving no room for unexpected searches or checking for
clean/dirty status.
The symptoms of untraceable equipment can be easily solved by
utilizing an RTLS system, which includes tags attached to the asset.
By using a signal transmitted via infrared, RF, or ultrasound
waves, the tagged items can be located immediately anywhere
within the facility. In addition, staff can easily identify the current
status of assets such as ‘in-use’ or ‘available’, which facilitates instant
locating of the nearest available item. This in turn increases
staff productivity and satisfaction as their time can be devoted to
activities more appropriate to their skills, expertise, and passion.
1. Gurse, Alys P & Carayon, Pascale (2007). “Performance Obstacles of Intensive Care Nurses.” Nursing Research 56, 185-194.
2. http://www.nursingtimes.net/nurses-waste-an-hour-a-shift-finding-equipment/1987381.article
3. Gurses, A.P. and Carayon, P. “Impact of performance obstacles on workload, quality of working life, and quality and safety of care among intensive care
nurses”. Health Services Research. April 2009 v44 i2 p422(22).
©2010 Intelligent InSites, Inc. All rights reserved.
1

The purchasing manager’s headache: “Do we really need to order another one?”
It is not unusual for a medical staff to hide equipment so they can
have immediate access to it when needed. Although employees
do it with good intentions, striving to provide better patient care and
save time, it too often becomes counterproductive as it causes overpurchasing
or unnecessary renting in order to keep the minimum
level on hand. Many assets also leave the department or facility and
never return due to being borrowed, stolen, or just unintentionally
misplaced by staff or taken by patients.
The symptoms of underutilized equipment can be dramatically reduced
by analyzing the data collected by the RTLS system. By knowing
which assets are being used and which are idle, you can put a
stop to unnecessary purchases or renting expenses. This also
lowers the cost of operations and increases the utilization rate of
the hospitals current equipment.
...the symptoms of
inappropriately
maintained equipment
can be easily eliminated
by using an RTLS
system...
The biomedical engineer’s headache: “We need to fix what?”
In order to provide the highest standards of patient care and safety,
healthcare facilities need to keep the equipment in tip-top condition,
conduct regular preventive maintenance of the equipment,
react immediately to any recall situation, and have a handle on any
expired inventory items. Often times, the service team simply cannot
locate the equipment scheduled for maintenance, which can result
in lost warranty or not meeting regulatory requirements. Quite often
just finding the piece of equipment that needs to be repaired or
cleaned poses a challenge to the engineering team.
The symptoms of inappropriately maintained equipment can be easily
eliminated by using an RTLS system. The deployment of the realtime
locating technologies can not only reduce the time staff needs
to perform maintenance, repair, or replacement, but it will also help
the facility adhere to the requirements mandated by equipment
manufacturers, or accreditation organizations, such as The Joint
Commision.
Additionally, the ‘location-enabled’ solution allows care providers to
automatically notify maintenance staff when a piece of equipment
needs repair by simply pressing a button on the asset tag. The work
order is then automatically created, and the exact ID and location of
the tag is communicated to the staff for an expedited response. This
ensures a better process for the requested repair, and more efficient
use of staff time.
©2010 Intelligent InSites, Inc. All rights reserved.
2

The COO’s headache: “How do I know what’s happening right now?”
If you ask the typical hospital CFO if they have a view into their hospital’s
financial status, they would most likely be able to show you a
computer dashboard flashing with updated financial metrics and Key
Performance Indicators. However, most hospital COO’s are lacking the
visibility into operational performance and are still using out-of-date
data that is often manually collected to base their decisions. Additional
struggles come with the need to compare data between different
departments across the hospital, or the entire healthcare network.
The symptoms of business intelligence blindness can be eliminated
by deploying a single system capable of effortlessly collecting
and analyzing data from location-enabled systems and
other healthcare information systems across the entire enterprise,
thus gaining real-time, hospital-wide visibility into operations.
This enables timely and sound business decisions, resulting
in more efficient deployment of resources and increased
profitability. Furthermore, CIO’s highly value a unified platform approach,
which allows collected data to be leveraged in many ways.
The patient’s headache: “I need to wait how long?”
Most importantly, the problem of locating available medical assets
not only lowers staff productivity, but it directly impacts
patient satisfaction. Patients become frustrated as the search for
equipment adds extra minutes to their wait times, which in turn affects
the opinion they have about the quality of services provided to them.
The symptoms of long wait times can be significantly reduced by ensuring
the medical staff have the tools allowing them to track equipment
continuously in real-time, without any additional effort on their part,
resulting in a less hectic environment and more patient-focused care.
In conclusion there is a simple, effective, and proven cure for
chronic operational inefficiency. Real-time locating solutions are
available for your hospital use, and the best thing of all - you can
self-prescribe it...
©2010 Intelligent InSites, Inc. All rights reserved.
3

Dr. Raymond Gruby – Chief Medical Officer
With more than 30 years of hands-on medical experience
as an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Gruby brings a wealth of
real-world healthcare experience that allows Intelligent InSites
to create healthcare-focused solutions that deliver value from
day one. Dr. Gruby is a recognized expert in streamlining healthcare
processes through the use of real-time locating technologies
and advanced workflow software applications.
You can contact him at raymond.gruby@intelligentinstes.com
About Intelligent InSites
Intelligent InSites provides real-time enterprise visibility and automation
solutions that transform the healthcare industry by dramatically
driving down costs while improving the level of care and
patient safety. By providing a single software platform capable of
streamlining dozens of systems and processes using real-time
location and sensory data continuously collected throughout
the enterprise, Intelligent InSites helps healthcare organizations
gain visibility into their operations and make profound improvements
in the area of patient safety, workflow optimization,
asset and inventory management, and regulatory compliance.
For more information about Intelligent InSites and its real-time location and condition-sensing solution --
InSites Enterprise Visibility Platform
visit www.IntelligentInSites.com or call 1-866-520-9117.
©2010 Intelligent InSites, Inc. All rights reserved.
4