Becker's ASC Review

47 EXECUTIVE BRIEFING 3 EXECUTIVE BRIEFING "With ONE TRAY, because you don't have dry time, we can run three loads of instrument sets in the time it takes us to run one load of wrapped stuff, so my reprocessing speed increases," Ms. Dixon said. Meanwhile, EZ-TRAX, the company's modular organizational trays, optimizes how instruments are arranged within a tray (Ms. Dixon describes it as resembling a puzzle piece). EZ-TRAX permits prioritizing instrumentation sets used during procedures in a way that reduces the total number of trays needed. For example, for total joint procedures, it can consolidate the typical six to eight trays used down to two or three. ONE CART complements the time and storage gains of ONE TRAY and EZ-TRAX, allowing products to be easily transported across small spaces. "All ORs," Ms. Dixon said, "face the challenge of safely transporting contaminated instruments from the OR to decontamination". Before implementing ONE CART, her staff used a large back table with a plastic cover to transport dirty instruments, which was cumbersome to navigate down narrow hallways. Ms. Dixon described how ONE CART allows her team to pull cases and keep all case supplies in one location, enabling quick turnover by having the next case ready and waiting outside the OR. "We can now safely place the contaminated instruments in a closed system, keep all surgical debris contained and complete in a timely turnover," she said. The result of using IST's suite of products is a gain in efficiency. Relieved to have encountered an effective and efficient solution to Orthopaedic Medical Group Surgery Center's instrumentation set handling constraints, Ms. Dixon said: "In ASCs, time and space are a killer." Efficiency gained through simplifying trays translates to increased profitability The time and space efficiencies ASCs can gain from using ONE TRAY and EZ-TRAX can lead to increased profitability. "Consolidating trays has a direct impact on profitability because there's a significant cost associated with processing every tray," Mr. Randall said. "If you can cut that cost in half, that's an economic win for everyone." He detailed a real-world scenario in which an orthopedic ASC that performs 20 total joint replacementsper week, using six conventional vendor trays per case at a total tray processing cost of $6,000 per week, can achieve annual savings of $156,000 in processing costs alone by switching to EZ-TRAX and halving its weekly processing cost. The purchase of an EZ-TRAX system for that type and volume of cases would require an initial investment of approximately $25,000. "You recover your ROI in about nine weeks," Mr. Randall said. Additional cost savings from using ONE TRAY come from not having to use blue wrap — the conventional sterile wrap into which clean instruments are folded post-sterilization — since IST's container system is a self-contained metal device. This feature further eliminates the odds of incidentally puncturing the blue wrap after the instruments have been sterilized, which instantly renders them contaminated, so they need to be re-processed again. Here, additional costs and surgical delays ensue. Strategic planning and engaging partners can enhance care delivery for ASCs As ASCs' surgical volumes, case mix and economic models evolve, ideally so should the mindsets of ASC operators. Embracing innovative sterilization processing solutions such as ONE TRAY and EZ-TRAX is one way to adopt a proactive mindset that understands current changes in the industry and anticipates others that may be just around the corner. "Many facilities get into a routine where they react when something goes wrong but are rarely being proactive and saying, 'Can we do this differently and still get a great outcome, but in a much more efficient way?'" Mr. Randall said. This kind of thinking should extend to how ASC operators and surgeons treat tray vendors. "A lot of times, individuals in sales are viewed as the box deliverers or the guys and gals who bring stuff and drop it off at the facility — and the value proposition kind of stops there," Mr. Randall said. He suggested that ASC leaders should "change the chip." "If people have open minds, engage their vendor partners and ask questions such as, 'What are you seeing when dealing with other ASCs? What other standards could we incorporate here that would enhance our delivery of care?'" he said. "That can provide significant benefits for many, many centers."

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