How Can RFID Help Hospital's Material Managers Lower Inventory Levels

Material managers are always looking for ways to improve their medical supply and devices management. This includes: 1.

Making sure nurses always have the items available 2.
Inventory levels are right - not over or under stocked 3. Supplies are accessible easily 4.
There is a good record keeping mechanism 5.
Replenishment is timely 6.

Storage space is used efficiently There are various software solutions, storage systems, and methodologies that assist in this vital task.
Color coded storage bins for example are different color bins, that contain families of items.
All the gloves can be stored in blue bins, hygiene materials can be stored in red bins.
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etc. How is this helpful - because a nurse eye balls the supply room, looks for blue bin section, and finds the gloves quickly. The less time he/she spends on finding supplies, the more time is available for patient care.
Let's take another inventory management tool - bar codes. Each supply item is coded with a regular bar code.

This means that nurses must scan the item they wish to remove every single time. The method enables to keep better track of what was used, and possibly a record of inventory levels. It depends on the complexity of the bar code solution.
Another way Material Managers better control over the inventory is through Par level methodology. Ensuring inventory is up-to-par means maintaining the approximate supply levels in each bin.

This means a supply personnel must walk to a hospital supply room, eye ball the bins, and see if anything is about to run low.

If so, record the items in need of replenishment, go back to the hospital storage room, gather the supplies and replenish. There are many more methods to keep running the supply room in a satisfactory, but these methods do not help the hospital excel.
What's wrong with the existing methods? 1.

They are not automatic 2. Prone to human errors 3. Not completely accurate 4.
Might leave the hospital with overstocks - wasted money and space 5.
Cause more work for hospital staff - counting, finding, replenishing Bottom line - simply more expensive and time consuming. So, what's the solution - RFID technology.

RFID technology has evolved in the past several years to help hospitals excel and work in a much leaner manner. RFID technology is able to track what has been used, what needs to be re-ordered.

It can connect to the hospital's ERP systems (Lawson, McKesson), and keep a better patient record.

There is no counting, or manual labor involved once RFID technological solutions are implemented.