OpFlow Instrument Tray Consolidation
On average, how many instrument trays are brought to the OR for a case at your hospital? All too commonly, at least 5 or 6 instrument trays are opened per surgery.
That number only increases if there are multiple surgeons and in cases with complex devices or implant placement, when it is not unusual for there to be up to 50 or 60 trays brought to the OR. As you may imagine, the number of instruments actually used per tray only decreases further as the number of trays per case increases.
So what’s the rationale behind opening so many instrument trays for a single case?
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Clearly, no surgeon or operating room team member wants to be in a situation where a needed instrument is not present, but what are the downsides to that abundance?
There is a variable expense associated with processing all of those unused instruments unnecessarily. The direct processing cost can be immediately reduced by only opening instrument trays that contain the instruments actually needed for a given case.
The unused instruments also incur avoidable depreciation, which inevitably occurs with each processing cycle. What is the capital expense budget for replacing instruments each year at your hospital?
Additional costs abound when you consider the time and labor required to transport numerous, heavy instrument trays to and from the operating room.
The key is leveraging technology to know exactly which instruments need to be present for a given case. Up until now, that has been a manual, arduous process for hospitals. Moreover, it has not been possible to readily compare tray contents and identify opportunities for tray consolidation using empirical data from actual case-based instrument usage. Imagine how the benefits compound when it is possible to only bring 1 or 2 instrument trays for a case…
OpFlow technology utilizes actual data on instrument usage collected in the OR. Our data analytics platform has the capability to compare trays for instrument redundancy on a case-specific, service line, or surgeon-basis so that you can consolidate instrument trays. That optimization leads to reduced expenditure on sterile processing and instrument re-purchase, decreases personnel and labor costs incurred, and generates excess instrument inventory that can be repurposed by your hospital or healthcare system.