From Trash to Technology: A better way to document supplies at the point of care

by Karen Conway on 2/20/2012 9:21 AM

Later today, I will climb on the plane and fly to Las Vegas to join 20 to 30 thousand of my colleagues in healthcare IT for the 2012 HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition. Sadly, once again this year, the role of the supply chain in meeting some of our most critical clinical and financial challenges in healthcare reform is absent from the agenda - with one notable exception. An impressive group of experts – from medicine and technology (including EMRs, clinical documentation, RFID, and system integration) will meet Wednesday afternoon at HIMSS to discuss the problems associated with inaccurate and incomplete clinical supply documentation at the point of use.

Research has shown that manual, duplicative and disjointed processes in the OR and other procedural suites result in more than $5 billion in waste each year in the US alone. To illustrate the point – while most likely the exception – a colleague recently told me about an OR where supply documentation consists of throwing packaging from supplies...

Read More »