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?
JB: At Symmetry Surgical, we recognize the need to help hospitals reduce their cost structure, especially following the impact of the pandemic. In response, we have created solutions that improve operational efficiencies and the cost of doing business without the need for a hospital to hire additional staff or incur significant costs. Our proprietary Instrument Inventory Solutions provide a comprehensive approach to improving surgical instrument data. Each solution has been designed to play a specific role in transforming instrument inventory data into actionable information.
Our solutions enable surgical teams to improve instrument inventory data quality and provide powerful analyses that identify and prioritize set and vendor standardization opportunities to improve cost, efficiency and quality of care. These programs can be done virtually and can be a one-time project or performed regularly to maintain data integrity and standardization.
Q: Are these solutions instrument tracking systems?
JB: No. The Instrument Inventory Solutions empower surgical teams with pristine data and information from complex analyses so they can make the surgical service line more efficient and cost-effective. These solutions eliminate manual efforts to identify, correct, and organize data and can perform billions of analyses in a matter of hours — an effort that would ordinarily take a hospital months or even years to complete
manually. We know information is power and without accurate data and standardized sets and vendors surgical service lines cannot operate in an optimal state.
Q: What are the Instrument Inventory Solutions and how do they improve cost, efficiency and quality of care?
JB: We have three solutions consisting of proprietary software and databases that provide facilities with the accurate, complete and detailed information needed to make smart surgical set and vendor-related decisions that impact a facility’s economic health.
The Count Sheet CommanderTM solution cleans and systematically organizes instrument inventory data so count sheets are accurate and complete. Count Sheet Commander identifies and corrects data integrity issues including missing, incomplete, or inaccurate vendors, part numbers, descriptions, product attributes and set ID numbers. With this information a hospital will have accurate preference cards, count sheets, set assembly and pulling, identification of critical instruments, and eliminate instrument type duplication across vendors. Count Sheet Commander then organizes instrument data and count sheets into a standardized nomenclature and sequence. With clean data, the OR and Sterile Processing teams will know EXACTLY what they have in their active inventory and on their count sheets.
Set IQTM is the Symmetry Surgical set standardization solution. This decision support tool conducts complex analyses to identify and prioritize set standardization opportunities by enabling facilities to know precisely what exists in inventory and the differences between sets. The current approach to obtaining this information requires manually opening and comparing sets to ascertain the differences in instrument type and count between sets and is a daunting, time-consuming task and can take months or even years. Using cleansed and normalized data, Set IQ analyzes each surgical set in the active inventory and compares the instrument type and count of each instrument type against all sets in the inventory. Set IQ can perform more than one billion analyses of set inventory and accurately identify and prioritize set standardization opportunities within 24 hours. In a world where knowledge is power, knowing what is in inventory can provide critical insights that can provide significant savings and transform how a hospital operates.
Vendor IQTM is proprietary software and a database that identifies vendor standardization opportunities. Using powerful software to analyze vendor codes across portfolios and surgical specialties, Vendor IQ identifies instrument codes that can be converted to the Symmetry Surgical portfolio of instruments and devices. This provides the hospital with an opportunity to aggregate spending with resulting lower pricing and supply chain efficiencies, reduction in non-compliant contracts, and erroneous off-contract spending that results in higher costs.
Q: As a supplier and manufacturer, what is Symmetry Surgical’s primary objective with Instrument Inventory Solutions?
JB: At Symmetry Surgical, we recognize that our products’ price and quality will always be important; however, the economic impact of the pandemic requires hospitals to quickly find other ways to improve their financial health. Hospitals need solutions that have a broader impact on their economic well-being. This type of innovative and disruptive solution addresses significant unmet customer needs, allowing surgical service lines to quickly achieve the “next level” of productivity, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Symmetry Surgical® is a leading healthcare technology and solutions provider of high-quality surgical instrumentation, a full line electrosurgery portfolio, and minimally invasive surgical devices. Symmetry Surgical maintains a rich legacy of trusted brands, quality, innovation, and customer service, supporting all surgical specialties and sites of care. While headquartered in Nashville, TN, they have a global reach and operate new product development, manufacturing, distribution, and sourcing facilities in Nashville, TN, Louisville, KY, Tuttlingen, Germany, and Melbourne, Australia.
