10
Blind Spot in
Hospitals
From page 9
2015Reg
Lineup
Location
much as 11% of the total charges. But product documentation
mistakes made in patient procedures clearly don’t affect just
billing; they also adversely affect patient safety since product
usage errors made at the point of care enter the clinical supply
documentation process and thus carry over into the patient’s
medical record.
Another serious outcome of these problems of poor clinical
supply documentation is that they make tracking a recalled
device to a patient nearly impossible. Without an advanced
inventory control system to track recalled items effectively, the
task of determining which patients have received which product
becomes a Herculean undertaking. The statistics on recalls are
sobering: according to the FDA, there were 407 medical device
recalls in the 3rd quarter of 2012 alone, of which 43 were Class
I recalls (those which pose a serious risk of injury or death).
As becomes quickly evident, accurate and complete
documentation of products from their arrival in the department’s
supply room to their usage in a patient procedure is critical
because it commences a virtuous cycle positively affecting all
areas of the hospital, from patient records and billing to product
reordering and revenue.
So what causes the blind spot? There are many interwoven
factors. It’s the result of having inadequate or no technology
tools, but it’s also caused by broken processes and a lack of
accountability. And although they may appear to do so, neither
MMIS nor clinical documentation systems are designed to track
and report on every clinical product throughout the hospital
cycle. When clinical inventory is not managed properly, an
invisible gap is created between materials management and
clinical departments. This gap results in an inability to manage
each individual stock item or physician preference item (PPI)
from the moment it enters the hospital until the moment it is used
in a patient or removed from the inventory. It also means that
clinical departments cannot track items precisely with lot/serial
number and expiration date in order to ensure that an expired
or recalled item is not used on a patient.
Effective and efficient clinical inventory management and clinical
supply documentation are no longer luxuries. Without them,
hospitals will continue to experience poor charge capture,
product waste, patient safety concerns, faulty billing records,
major compliance risk, and much more. As hospitals increasingly
move toward electronic medical records, it will become even
more critical to ensure that these problems are reined in so that
the products usage data that is recorded and/or stored in the
EMR is reliable, accurate, and complete.
Date
Harrisonburg, VA
1/31/15
Denver
2/12/15 2/13/15
Tenessee/Kentucky
2/7/15
Boston
2/21/15
Cleveland
3/7/15
Georgia
3/21/15
Saratoga Springs
3/28/15
Indianapolis
4/11/15
Charlotte
4/25/15
Rockford
4/25/15
Washington, DC
5/16/15
Phoenix
6/13/15
New Jersey
September
Kansas City, MO
September
Maywood, IL
September
Minneapolis
September
Salt Lake City
October
Portland
October
Southern California
October
Texas
October
Miami
October
Little Rock/Sioux Falls October
Richmond
VUEMED is a global healthcare technology company that offers cutting-edge
software and web-based solutions for the documentation and tracking of medical
products, devices and supplies. VUEMED works with a variety of specialty medical
departments (OR, Cath, EP IR and GI labs) in many different hospital settings, as
,
well as with manufacturers and supply chain organizations. VueTrack™, VUEMED’s
flagship product, is an IT solution that eliminates the blind spot by tracking clinical
supplies from their entry into a department’s stock to their point of care for a
specific patient procedure, like a check-in and check-out system. VueTrack’s™ ability
to capture real-time clinical inventory data also enables users to run detailed,
specialized reports within seconds from anywhere via the web. For more
information, visit www.vuemed.com.
November
Fresno
November
Philadelphia
November
Seattle
November