The Solution To Medical Inventory Shrinkage: Passive RFID
Today, hospitals use state of the art equipment to diagnose and treat patients. While some of these machines, like an MRI machine, are difficult to lose track of, there are numerous others that can be easily lost. One common example is telemetry devices which can be as small as a mobile handset. Telemetry devices are expensive, each piece costing up to as much as $5000, meaning hospitals can accrue huge losses simply due to either device misplacement or device loss. This loss of medical equipment is known as inventory shrinkage, and it is a huge problem for healthcare facilities.
The Problem: Inventory Shrinkage
Telemetry devices, being small in size, often times get mixed with soiled bed linens and are mistakenly sent to laundry, or are, on rare occasion, stolen. Once lost, there is not much hospitals can do to trace these devices. While losing a single device may not cause a serious dent to a hospital’s finances, frequent losses can accumulate and cause major setbacks to a hospital’s budget.
The Solution: Passive RFID
Being able to track these medical devices can help hospitals not only reduce such losses but can also help them recover lost equipment. One way to reduce shrinkage of telemetry devices in hospitals is to use passive RFID. When a passive RFID tag is attached to a telemetry device, it is possible to trace its location without having the hospital staff sift through loads of laundry looking for such equipment before sending the linen for wash.
With such an RFID enabled asset management solution, hospital staff can be alerted whenever a telemetry device passes through a laundry or linen collection point. This helps hospitals reduce loses and makes managing these assets much easier.
Why Passive RFID
Passive RFID tags are a preferred solution due to their small size. Passive RFID tags come in various sizes , enabling hospitals to tag equipment of different sizes, from small IV pumps to larger equipment like EKG or patient monitors. Additionally, passive RFID is more affordable for hospitals, allowing them to tag and manage more equipment and devices, and be better positioned to deliver an asset management solution at any hospital.
Hospital Asset Management Solution
A good asset management solution is extremely important to a hospital’s operations and so it is crucial for hospitals to invest in a solution that can deliver value in a cost effective manner. This can only be accomplished if a hospital shares information on the type and quantity of equipment and devices that need to be tagged to manage inventory shrinkage and inventory losses. Additionally, hospital staff will need to be trained on handling all tagged equipment and devices, and have knowledge of the asset management process.
Asset management solutions from Pycube can help hospitals track and maintain all medical and non-medical equipment and devices in a hospital. Pycube works with hospitals to deliver them the capability to tag, track and manage all their equipment and devices using a computer or a mobile device so that their asset information is available to them at all times.
