Medical Supply Room Transformation
How wireless technology can optimize a medical supply room
The new RFID system helped reduce wasted time stemming from disorganization and difficulty tracking stock.
At Bruyère Health, innovation meets efficiency in the critical field of inventory management.
Our innovation team partnered with Pegasus Medical and Acart to spearhead a two-basket supply management system using technological solutions to overcome challenges with inventory storage.
Supply management plays a crucial role in health care by ensuring the availability of supplies and optimizing patient care processes.
While the “two-bin Kanban” system of inventory management is widely used for its simplicity, it can often fall short, leading to issues with inventory tracking, disorganized supply rooms, missing stock tags, and more. These inefficiencies waste time, make it difficult to locate supplies, and can create shortages or lengthy wait time to restock—all barriers to patient care.
That’s why we piloted a new two-basket supply management system project by Pegasus medical and Acart that uses radio frequency identification (RFID) tags.
The RFID technology offered a promising way to increase efficiency by improving how inventory levels are tracked. Out-of-stock alerts are automatically sent to procurement teams—staff don’t have to scan each basket manually. This reduced supply outages.
During the six month trial, we achieved:
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100 percent accuracy from RFID-tagged compartments indicating stock status
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53 percent reduction in restocking time for sterile processing staff
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54 percent reduction in time spent by clinical staff searching for supplies
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20 percent fewer calls to procurement for reorders
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8 percent increase in inventory per square foot efficiency
The new RFID system helped reduce wasted time stemming from disorganization and difficulty tracking stock.
Bruyère Health continues to work with innovative partners and apply technological solutions to improve on existing methods like the critical challenges surrounding medical supply management.
