Hospitals can reduce patient safety risks through scanning and recall alerts at the clinical point-of-use

2 Minute Read – As a registered nurse that has spent 15 years caring for patients in the OR and another 19 years helping ORs manage their extensive inventories, I know just how significant it is that our new 4.2 release includes FDA-integration for product recall. According to research, “Between 2002 and 2016, 806 million medical devices were recalled.” Yes, you read that correctly…806 million! Product recall notifications are an evitable component of the hospital supply chain; Unfortunately, these important notifications don’t always make their way to the appropriate persons. The consequences of a recalled supply or implant making their way into a procedure and/or into a patient can be detrimental as they can increase the exposure of patients and staff to infection, injury and even death and create liability issues for the hospital.

Perhaps this fictitious (albeit very real) patient story helps to explain the importance of our FDA national recall database integration:

A 58-year old male patient was scheduled for coronary artery by-pass surgery. A recalled catheter guide was used during the procedure for the placement of a guidewire by the physician. It was not known at the time that the catheter guide was pulled that the product was recalled. It was noted upon removal of the catheter guide from the patient that the outer material had separated from the device and a fragment had entered the patient’s blood stream. Attempts to remove the fragment prolonged the procedure by an estimated two (2) additional hours. The fragment migrated further resulting in a blocked vessel necessitating an additional surgery to remove.

The new enhanced integration between the FDA’s recall database and the Syft Synergy Point-of-Use (POU) platform alerts the clinician of a product recall at the time the product is scanned thereby increasing patient safety and reducing the liability issues that may arise from the inadvertent use of a recalled product.

I welcome the opportunity to speak to you about this topic. Please connect with me if you’d like more information (lsmith@syftco.com). Together, we can improve your clinical supply chain and help ensure the best outcomes for your patients.

Learn more about Syft Synergy 4.2 including FDA integration

Syft’s Brion Bailey, and Marita Parks share their top ORBM session recommendations.

5 Minute Read – The OR Business Management Conference (ORBM) is nearly here. With so many great sessions to choose from, it may be difficult to determine where to spend your time. To help, we’ve reviewed all of the sessions, and identified our top recommendations.

In addition to taking advantage of these educational opportunities, consider setting aside some time to connect with us at ORBM. Feel free to stop by our booth #10, schedule a time to meet one-on-one, or enjoy a free drink with us during our Sip with Syft event, held Tuesday, January 28, from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. We’d love to see you.

Register to Sip with Syft

Our ORBM 2020 Session Recommendations

1. Opening Keynote: No Margin, No Mission – Maximizing Your Profit Margins With A Focused Approach January 28, 8 a.m.-9 a.m. We’re very excited about the topic of this keynote, and several of our team members plan to attend. During this presentation, David Wildebrandt, MHA, Managing Director of Berkeley Research Group, LLC, will discuss how to create a more effective service line strategy, define which markets you serve, reconfigure growth initiatives, and redefine key performance indicators. Related: Check out Marita’s recent article in Supply Chain Strategies & Solutions magazine: 5 Ways to Overcome Resistance to Optimizing the Supply Chain
2. Re-engineering ‘Spaghetti’ Supplies in the OR January 28, 9 a.m.-10 a.m. At Syft, we’re keenly focused on using technology to help hospitals form stronger partnerships and workflows between supply chain management staff and OR clinical staff. This optimizes efficiency and leads to more cost-effective, high-quality decision making. This session will provide you with the opportunity to hear directly from leaders at Inova Health who experienced significant success as a result of an innovative approach. Related: Check out Brion’s recent article in which he discusses the top ways supply chain management is changing.
3. Evolution or Revolution? Creating a Perioperative Expense Reduction Team Tuesday, January 28, 12:45 p.m.-1:45 p.m. We don’t need to tell you how critical it is to identify cost-savings opportunities systemwide, and perioperative services is no exception. During this session, you’ll hear how the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center created a dedicated perioperative expense reduction team to meet cost reduction goals. Related: Eight Ways To Reduce Your Supply Chain Costs
4. Fear Isn’t Free: Reduce Waste and Save Through Physician Preference Card Standardization Wednesday, January 29, 9 a.m.-10 a.m. At Syft, we’ve made preference card optimization a top priority. Healthcare executives can’t ignore opportunities to optimize their supply chains, and outdated physician preference cards are one of the biggest supply chain management challenges. During this session, you’ll learn how UMC Health System successfully standardized its physician preference cards. Learn how the Syft Synergy preference card management solution ensures more accurate case picking helping to prevent supply waste and returns.
5. Power and Perils of Data Analytics Wednesday, January 29, 2 p.m.-3 p.m. Data is only valuable to hospitals when it provides actionable information. At Syft, we’re dedicated to ensuring hospitals receive the right data, at the right time, for the right needs. This presentation, led by the director of surgical analytics at Venderbilt University Medical Center, will highlight top data challenges and opportunities.
6. A Surgeon’s Take on Case Receipts Wednesday, January 29, 4:45 p.m.-5:45 p.m. We know that surgical case receipt initiatives can lead to significant cost savings for hospitals, but this presentation will provide a valuable opportunity to hear about surgical case receipt directly from a surgeon’s perspective. Kevin Kaplan, MD, team physician orthopedic surgeon at Jacksonville Jaguars/Baptist Medical Center, will share his experience.

Our Other Top ORBM 2020 Session Recommendations

• A Sustainable OR Can Exist: Utilizing Data for Efficiency and Throughput Tuesday, January 28, 9 a.m.-10 a.m.
• Show Me the Money: Incentivizing Productivity Tuesday, January 28, 10:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m.
• The Art of Sharing: Maximizing Perioperative Equipment Utilization Tuesday, January 28, 2 p.m.-3 p.m.
• Thinking Outside the Box to Efficiently Manage Supply Chain Wednesday, January 29, 10:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m.
• Sustainable Gains Follow Meaningful Change in Supply Management Mindset Wednesday, January 29, 12:45 p.m.-1:45 p.m.
• Breakfast Keynote: Increasing OR Access, Accountability, and Transparency at Duke University Health Care System Thursday, January 30, 7:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m.
• Cost Control: Understanding the Hidden Cost of Implants Thursday, January 30, 10:15 a.m.-11:15 a.m.

We hope this list helps ensure you have a productive and informative ORBM experience. Don’t forget to set up a meeting with us or register for Sip with Syft. We’d love to see you there!

Register to Sip with Syft

Qualities Shared by Top Hospital Supply Chain Leaders

3 Minute Read – Gartner, Inc. has released its 11th annual Healthcare Supply Chain Top 25 ranking, which recognizes companies across the healthcare value chain that demonstrate the highest levels of supply chain leadership. This year, nearly all of the healthcare organizations on the list (8 of 11) are Syft customers. Stephen Meyer, Senior Research Director with the Gartner Supply Chain Practice, said the top 25 leaders stand out for their agility and ability to implement new supply chain capabilities such as digital technology. “The top supply chains in this year’s ranking have embraced those skills and excelled in executing them,” he said. During a webinar in which Gartner analysts revealed the top 25 leaders, Meyer defined supply chain agility as the ability to:

• Sense and respond to changes
• Use continuous improvement tools to remove delays
• Keep pace with business cycles like procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, and manufacturing lead times

Strategic, Innovative Approaches

Another important quality shared by the top 25 organizations is an enterprise-wide approach to supply chain management, in which “every individual in the organization is aware of their expected contribution to the initiative,” said Meyer. He added that supply chain leaders understand that strategy execution is more important than strategy development. Finally, Meyer said supply chain leaders recognize the benefits of digital supply chain technologies, such as connected devices and communication technology. “Digital supply chain requires experimentation to be successful,” he explained. “Supply chain leaders must be willing to provide resources without the expectation that every project will generate a return on investment.”

Critical Capabilities

During the webinar, Meyer and his colleagues shared specific reasons the top 25 leaders had been selected. The following three themes emerged:

1. Supply chain leaders embrace data analytics and digital technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.
2. Supply chain leaders have collaborative processes, in which a clinically integrated supply chain has been woven into patient care.
3. Supply chain leaders experience significant savings due to inventory consolidation and supply chain standardization.

At Syft, we’re committed to providing software and services that support these capabilities and characteristics. Our platform of solutions includes AI-enabled data analytics, supply chain automation software, data auditing and cleansing services, and inventory valuation services and reporting that gives hospitals strategic insight into their overall spend, inventory processes, and vendor relationships. We provide seamless integration into hospitals’ ERP, EMR and other technology systems. And, we make workflows more efficient by providing mobile and portal access. We’ve found that our commitment to supporting hospitals in these ways, and others, leads to a high return on investment for our customers. In fact, we know that most hospitals could save millions of dollars by optimizing their supply chain. Take a few moments to determine how much your hospital could save using this free tool. Simply toggle to your estimated annual number of discharges, and you’ll receive:

• Customized information related to your inventory savings.
• A step-by-step explanation of how we determined these calculations supported by citations and sources.
• The seven other ways your organization can reduce supply chain costs in areas such as supply standardization, expired product management/recall, labor efficiency, case-cost capture, and OR and procedural throughput.

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners. We’re honored to partner with many of the hospitals and health systems recognized as supply chain leaders, and we look forward to working with more innovative healthcare organizations in 2020.