Business Case: How Nordic hospitals can maximize efficiency by streamlining their asset management

Asset Inventory Management

Nordic hospitals are facing several challenges when it comes to managing and administering their medical assets – resulting in unnecessary costs and wasted staff resources. To give a clear understanding of how BordaTex’s solutions can help medical providers tackle these challenges, we present here a business case from a typical Nordic hospital which we’ve named Nordic Hospital X. We’ll describe how IoT-technology ensures efficient and reliable ways of handling medical assets and streamline work procedures, allowing staff to devote their complete focus on patients.

Nordic Hospital X struggled with keeping solid track of their assets. Staff spent more time than necessary searching for assets and over-purchases often occurred due to inaccurate inventory lists. To combat their problems and gain more control, Nordic Hospital X implemented BordaTex’s Asset Inventory Management and have since then gotten benefits such as:

• Fast and reliable inventory with RFID-tags registered with a hand scanner, helping staff save time and energy.
• Detailed and updated inventory lists through the Lighthouse software, enabling total accuracy and transparency of all assets.
• Every transaction (handovers, repairs, adjustments etc.) are handled and tracked directly in Lighthouse, which in turn maximizes asset utilization.

Inventory carried out in seconds with the hand scanner

With Asset Inventory Management, Nordic Hospital X has marked all their assets such as beds, wheelchairs or blood pressure monitors with RFID-tags. The RFID-tags are scanned with a hand scanner and stored in the software Lighthouse. The scanner counts the assets digitally, instead of hospital staff counting them manually. A single person can perform an inventory of a whole room in a matter of seconds. The person doesn’t even need to see the assets they’re counting, they simply need to point the hand scanner and press a button.

Since taking inventory with Asset Inventory Management is much less time consuming than before, Nordic Hospital X can perform continuous inventory at a much higher rate. Always ensuring accurate information.

Lighthouse software provides detailed information about all assets

The Lighthouse software registers all of Nordic Hospital X’s assets and provides an efficient way of administering them. Every asset is registered with a name, RFID-code for identification, amount, location and status (e.g., if the asset needs service). Even assets without an RFID-tag can be included in the system. When inventory is taken with the hand scanner, data in Lighthouse is instantly updated.

Lighthouse helps Nordic Hospital X keep track of their assets by:

• Registering new assets
• Removing assets not available for use
• Assigning ownership of assets being handed out – to determine who’s responsible for the asset
• Sending an alarm if assets are handed out without ownership being assigned

Registering Nordic Hospital X’s assets in Lighthouse can happen in several ways:

• One asset at a time, manually or through an Excel-document
• Through scanning the RFID-tags one by one with the hand scanner
• Directly through Nordic Hospital X’s previous inventory system

All data in Lighthouse is easily searchable and filtered so that Nordic Hospital X’s staff can find the information they need as quickly as possible. For instance, if a nurse needs to know the service status of a certain medical scale or the whereabouts of an otoscope, Lighthouse can provide the information in seconds.

Staff can place and follow repair orders through Lighthouse

Lighthouse also helps simplify the process of acquiring repairs, adjustments or other measures for assets. The process is tailored for Nordic Hospital X’s routines and gives the staff a complete overview and control of the workflow, start to finish:

• Work order created
• Appropriate personnel examines the asset
• Repair of the asset started
• Repair of asset completed
• Work order completed

All the information about the work order is gathered in Lighthouse, which helps Nordic Hospital X’s staff to see which assets need repairing and where they are in the process.

The results – Greater control and no wasted resources

Asset Inventory Management gives Nordic Hospital X a full overview and control over their assets. The data from Lighthouse is clearly presented in different categories so Nordic Hospital X can know which and how many assets are available, in a different location, missing, at maintenance, with a patient, in transfer, broken, etc.

Nordic Hospital X can now utilize their assets more efficiently, increase asset counting speed and reduce time wasted by staff searching for assets. When orders for purchases or rentals are placed, they can subsequently make much more informed decisions resulting in Nordic Hospital X saving money compared to before implementing Asset Inventory Management.

If you have any questions or want to learn more about how Asset Inventory Management can help your organization, please contact us here.

 

Photo by Samuel Scalzo on Unsplash