Gundersen Lutheran Handles Instruments with Wireless
Health Management Technology explains how Gundersen Lutheran Health System in LaCrosse, Wis., uses a Lawson wireless system to manage surgical instruments and tray preparation. First, it’s interesting to understand where the non-profit group, which includes a 325-bed teaching hospital, was starting from:
- About 3,700-4,000 trays with 69,000 to 73,000 instruments are prepared per week by a staff of 34 technicians.
- Paper records and photographs in big binder catalogs were used to record how instruments look and in what order to place them in trays.
- Cost for surgery delays because of trays with missing or wrong instruments was estimated at $40 per minute.
The Surgical Instrument Management (SIM) was implemented a couple of years ago on top of other applications from the same vendor that the hospital was already using for general ledger, human resources and materials asset management. This web application matches bar codes to its database. All trays are bar coded so that techs can scan them and get instructions on how to fill and sterilize them. Wireless wands let staff scan the trays anywhere; there’s also a computer workstation at the point of assembly.
Jan Jarvinen, director of materials management at Gundersen Lutheran, says the workflow as trays and instruments move from preparation to staging to inventory to the OR requires a lot of wanding to scan the codes. Ideally he would like to use RFID instead to save time. Still, the system provided a measureable productivity hike and raised tray completion rate from 84 to 98 percent. To get more efficiency out of it, Jarviven would like to “automate the ordering of trays through the OR scheduling system, so orders will be able to be filled on demand.”
July 16, 2006 Related topics: Wireless, Supply chain/SCM, IT & software