Avoidable expense associated with vendor instrument trays

A growing number of procedures, across many different service lines, involve the placement of implantable devices. Those devices typically require specific instrumentation aligned with the manufacturer or device vendor.

Given the wide breadth of indications for these devices, there is a tremendous volume of instrumentation that may be applicable and routinely accompanies one of these procedures.

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There are several major problems with the way that instrument trays from vendors are currently managed:

·       There are typically numerous (sometimes upwards of 50 to 60) large instrument trays transported to each case, of which only a small percentage of the instrumentation is actually needed and used.

·       There is inherent loss of inventory when transporting that quantity of instruments routinely, which serves as a significant cost contributor.

·       Hospitals incur a substantial labor and expense burden related to sterilization and assembly of that quantity of vendor instrument trays.

·       Vendor representatives bear the burden of locating and configuring instrument tray sets for each case, without the benefit of accurate historical usage data on an instrument level.

·       Lastly, since the actual instrumentation usage data are not known, there is minimal feedback available to the vendor for R&D purposes.

Combined, these factors contribute to significant avoidable expense and inefficiency for the vendor and hospital systems. Our next post will explore the potential value in leveraging data to solve this ubiquitous and costly problem.