Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

24 Executive Briefing SPONSORED BY T he pandemic's impact on elective procedures and reimbursement rendered price reductions from vendors on medical devices and supplies inadequate to improve hospitals' economic health. Symmetry Surgical Inc.'s unique solutions address this issue by improving efficiency, cost, and quality of care, with resulting significant financial benefits. In a recent interview with Becker's Clinical Leadership & Infection Control, Jeff Bell, senior vice president and CMO of Symmetry Surgical, discussed how surgical instrument data integrity and set standardization can help facilities efficiently reduce inventory costs, improve efficiency and reduce variation in care. Question: According to a report from Kaufman Hall and the American Hospital Association, hospitals, and health systems are facing unprecedented financial pressures and could lose between $45 and $122 billion due to the lingering effects of COVID-19. How does improving instrument data in the operating room make an impact on these losses? Jeff Bell: For most hospitals, surgical instrument inventory is a major investment, consisting of tens of thousands of surgical instruments used across thousands of OR instrument trays. Keeping track of that valuable inventory, including product codes and descriptions, can be an enormous challenge. Without clean and accurate data that is systematically organized in a standardized nomenclature, hospitals may find their count sheets have missing, incorrect, or partial information with respect to vendors, part numbers, or descriptions. As a result, hospitals are unable to analyze what instruments they own, leading to unintended purchases of duplicate sets and unnecessarily high inventory levels. Additionally, the lack of set standardization creates variation in care and operational inefficiencies. These issues reduce operational efficiency and increase costs in hospitals. When we analyze a hospital's active surgical inventory, we consistently see unintended surgical set duplication. For example, one hospital that we analyzed had 438 surgical sets that were identical in instrument type and count. So, the only difference between these sets was the name. This unnecessarily causes increased inventory costs and inefficiencies. Q: What is the root cause of incomplete or inaccurate surgical instrument data? JB: Several factors are contributing to instrument inventory data integrity issues. One of the most significant is the lack of policies requiring staff to utilize standardized data terms when entering instrument data. As a result, each staff member can use different abbreviations or names or aliases for instrument types or vendors. In the absence of standardized data entry policies and with the limited time staff have available for these tasks information can be entered incorrectly, partially, or not at all. A perfect example of this unintended result was one hospital's active instrument inventory data, which contained more than 8,500 entries that were missing both the manufacturer and catalog numbers. Q: How does incomplete or incorrect surgical instrument inventory data impact a facility's bottom line? JB: Data integrity issues make it exceedingly difficult and time- consuming to understand exactly what is in inventory. When a surgical team does not know what its inventory contains then they may unnecessarily purchase duplicate instruments, thinking they are needed. This not only wastes money but also consumes precious storage space in the OR and Sterile Processing Departments. Data integrity issues also make it difficult to compare sets for standardization opportunities and vendor purchases for vendor rationalization opportunities. A comprehensive surgical instrument inventory solution can reduce inventory costs by eliminating costs associated with the acquisition of new instruments while improving the quality of care and efficiency by minimizing errors and eliminating potential surgical delays. Q: How can hospitals improve their data integrity without disruption to operations or adding dedicated staff to identify and correct these issues? A comprehensive approach to surgical instrument inventory data unlocks cost-savings and efficiencies in hospitals Without clean and accurate data that is systematically organized in a standardized nomenclature, hospitals may find their count sheets have missing, incorrect, or partial information with respect to vendors, part numbers, or descriptions." Data integrity issues make it exceedingly difficult and time- consuming to understand exactly what is in inventory."

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