Using medical inventory management software can improve your hospital’s overall efficiency. Your entire team (from custodial staff to doctors) and even patients can benefit from it. Your team’s job is already hard, but as hospitals become more and more crowded, they can only get harder.
We’re anticipating hospital admissions to reach a record high globally, especially because of the COVID-19. With the steady increase in the average worldwide life expectancy and an aging population in developed countries, the healthcare sector struggles to keep up with the increasing demands and costs every year. With the lack of process, it’ll be quite hard for medical institutions to improve returns on investment, comply with regulations, and optimize workflows.
What can you do to alleviate some pressure off your hospital staff? The answer is simple: use medical inventory management software.
How medical inventory management software help doctors?
Here are five ways your doctors can benefit from using medical inventory management software:
Access to medical assets when needed
Doctors often deal with a lot of emergencies every day, and most of them require the use of expensive medical equipment like infusion pumps or PET scanners. These tools have a limited lifespan and need to be cycled out to comply with medical standards.
Because of the constant inflow of patients, hospitals need to have a robust system in place so they can procure replacements on time. This will help doctors for tools that need to be ordered in advance and tools that need to be replenished constantly.
Also, doctors need to book certain medical equipment ahead of time. This will ensure that they aren’t wasting any resources just to find replacements at the last minute. With an inventory system in place, it will be easier for doctors to procure and book assets.
Automation saves time
You may not know this, but doctors have very stressful lives. They have a lot of things on their plate, that’s why it will help make their jobs easier with an inventory system in place. About 47% of doctors use digital technologies to help them in their duties, whether it’s accessing technical information or communicating with patients.
How does medical inventory management software help? Imagine how stressful it is for an administrator to come up with a list of tools and equipment necessary for each appointment, assign the tools to the doctors, and compile a report on utilization or maintenance for each department. Doctors can bid farewell to these using automated inventory management software for your hospital. All they need to do is to tag all inventory items with a unique QR code or barcode so your staff can easily scan medical tools to improve processing times and maintain a reliable database.
Improvement of equipment reliability
Hospital equipment should always be up and running, regardless of the circumstances. There should be plans set up for unexpected situations like power outages and regular maintenance. When structuring maintenance, make sure to use a software solution to plan repair and service sessions ahead of time, to reduce interruptions. Scheduled maintenance can help with:
- Decreasing downtime for machines and equipment
- Improving operational efficiency through routine inspections
- Increasing safety and quality control in hospitals
- Lowering overhead costs through reduced premature replacements
These will enable assets to meet compliance and regulatory standards, which is important to the continued trust in hospital services.
Strengthen security through inventory check-ins
Hospitals are complex institutions, as they cater to all kinds of patients. Because of this, they need to have different types of tools and machines with different functions, specifications, and storage instructions. Without a reliable software that will help organize these items, they can get lost or misplaced easily. Without a proper check-in and check-out mechanism, they can be misused very easily, and this can be a very huge problem for doctors.
To avoid this from happening, standardized medical inventory management software will allow your staff to trace the ownership of all the assets to a centralized database. This will make it easier for you to track and monitor tool usage, too, which will lower the chances of fraudulent activities. Doctors can easily carry out their operations without the hassle of losing their tools or equipment.
Eliminate expired injectables and medicines
It’s pretty common for hospitals to house pharmacies to speed up patient care. These pharmacies store and dispense items including injections, drugs, and IV fluids. And while medical stocks have a limited shelf life, they need to be disposed of properly. Some items need to be kept at certain temperatures to protect them from damage.
Medical inventory management software is important to keep track of and identify problem medications. Without it, it can encourage bad practices. The staff may end up using expired products or medicines on patients by accident. An inventory system in place will enable your staff to monitor inventory from the time they were purchased, to the time they are consumed. It will also send out alerts whenever an item is close to expiry, which ensures best practices to help doctors avoid costly malpractice.
Conclusion
The lack of process will make it hard for your hospital to comply with regulations and optimize workflows. But if your hospital has an inventory management software in place, your staff will be able to:
- Maximize provider time. Automated inventory management can relieve your staff of the supply chain duties and give them more time to spend with the patients.
- Meet inventory goals. With automated data capture, you’ll be able to get accurate and real-time inventory counts, and you can set up parameters for automatic re-orders. This will eliminate product shortages and waste.
- Make better decisions. Your staff will be able to collect data and transform them into analytics to help you understand inventory use, maintenance, and waste needs. You’ll also have the power to make better, data-driven decisions to forecast demands more accurately.
- Reduce expirations and manage recalls. Being able to track medical equipment, devices, and medicines will allow you to manage recalls and reduce the number of expired items on your shelves. Thanks to the alerts and notifications, you’ll be able to stay updated with medical information.