Mandatory Requirements for Tracking Surgical Equipment

Mandatory Requirements for Tracking Surgical Equipment Mar 27 2013

Individual Item Tracking The largest complaint seems to be with the inability to track individual medical items. Smaller items like scalpels and hemostats have been nearly impossible to track with any type of accuracy. Part of the problem seems to be that they are metal on metal items that some scan equipment cannot differentiate one from another. At best, it will scan a “tray” of instruments. Savance Health has the RFID technology that can solve this problem. Asset Protection The FDA might be changing the playing field, but the impact to healthcare facility asset management will be a positive and beneficial one. The ability to know where surgical instruments are at any given time is priceless. Inventory management is one of the best cost conserving measures possible. You can find out quickly if costly instruments have come up missing and determine their last known location. Reducing loss and theft saves money. Infection Control Measures Controlling hospital acquired infection or HAI is a very important task for any healthcare facility. Reducing liability and the inherent danger to a patient means keeping adequate records of surgical instrument sterilization and storage routines. RFID tracking of these instruments will let you know exactly when they have been pulled, used, autoclaved and stored. Any skip in the routine will be caught immediately and can be remedied. Instrument Quality No matter how much surgical instruments cost, there will come a time that they need replaced. When you are in charge of hundreds and even thousands of surgical instruments, you need all the help available to track the age and condition of each individual item in use. You can itemize each instrument with details of purchase date and current condition. It will help track when replacement is essential. Knowing the perfect time to replace older surgical instruments will maximize their life and use. This makes a real difference in the bottom line revenue of your facility. The Savance Health Solution Savance Health RFID technology will allow you to track each individual surgical instrument with pin-point 100% accuracy. It is so sensitive that it can tell you exactly which room the items are located in. This will prove useful in asset management for inventory, loss prevention, sterilization and replacement scheduling. Tracking surgical instrument use in real time helps decide whether there is enough equipment, scheduling difficulties with available equipment and age replacement issues. It becomes apparent if there is a serious equipment shortage that requires additional purchases. Some surgical instruments are very specialized and pricey. Knowing when the equipment is available will help in the scheduling of certain procedures. Surgical instruments that become defective or break due to age can be pulled out of service quickly. This ensures the integrity of the available instruments for all procedures. How Does Savance Health RFID Work? The RFID technology that Savance Health uses is able to detect each surgical instrument individually. The chip technology is autoclave safe and has a lifetime cycle of at least 10-years. The scan capabilities are 100% accurate and sensitive enough for the largest of healthcare facilities. It is fully customizable for any number of surgical instruments you need to track. It eliminates tedious manual check-in and check-out and will bring you into full compliance with the coming FDA regulation in 2014. It means you can begin the year without any worries regarding the tracking capability of your facility in regards to all of the surgical instruments you have now and will acquire in the future.