As patient care continues to transition to nonacute sites, many health systems are struggling to meet the change in medical equipment demands across the care continuum. One reason for this challenge is a lack of visibility and inaccurate medical equipment inventories. To understand how healthcare organizations can gain visibility into their true asset inventories, Becker's Hospital Review recently spoke with two experts about the value of clinical asset informatics:
- Dave Klumpe, president of clinical asset management at TRIMEDX
- Murphy McGraw, director of product management at TRIMEDX
Increased demand for care in ambulatory settings creates medical equipment management challenges
Trends like consumerism, payment reform and changes to reimbursement policies are driving patient care outside the four walls of the hospital. "Healthcare is expensive and everyone is trying to reduce the cost of care," Mr. Klumpe said. "Ambulatory settings are absolutely one way to do that. During the pandemic, patients got more comfortable with alternative approaches to delivering care including ambulatory settings."
As demand spikes at nonacute settings, optimizing device inventories at the health-system level has become increasingly important. "One of the things we see is that healthcare organizations often purchase new medical devices to satisfy growing demand at ambulatory care centers," Mr. McGraw said. "They may already have devices at acute sites, however, that are underutilized. That equipment could be reallocated to defer capital spending."
At acute care providers, TRIMEDX often sees median daily equipment utilization rates of 45 percent to 50 percent, meaning that on daily basis, over half of providers’ equipment is not in use. "They actually have a lot more equipment capacity than they realize," Mr. Klumpe said. "We give providers visibility into their assets and identify opportunities to reallocate existing assets into new sites of care."
Technology provides true visibility into device inventories
Technology is essential for transforming the way health systems view their device inventories. TRIMEDX helps organizations transition from paper-based inventory management to a centralized inventory management system that captures device demographic information, as well as any work that occurs on devices. This provides a single source of truth for medical device management. In addition to inventorying devices, TRIMEDX also uses network monitoring tools to track the location and availability of medical devices.
"If you think about the M&A or consolidation activity that occurs, there may be multiple inventory systems in use across different systems or departments," Mr. McGraw said. "Centralizing all that is foundational to unlocking the value that exists there. On an annual basis, our teams perform a physical inventory of devices and validate each device."
Enhanced asset visibility translates into financial benefits, as well as better patient care
Healthcare organizations with a unified device inventory have discovered that their medical devices can be used as a savings lever. When health systems know what they own and where it is located, they can reduce operating expenses and optimize capital expenditures.
"Understanding utilization for each device helps identify the sites where excess inventory exists," Mr. McGraw said. "Device utilization data in combination with inventory benchmarking are key to better capital planning decision-making. If devices are underutilized in their current care setting, you may be able to reallocate some of those to higher-demand sites of care."
In some cases, underutilization may be due to shifts in patient demand, while in others it may be due to an excessive number of devices. Understanding the true number of devices needed to meet clinical demand at different sites of care is essential for getting the right quantity of devices into the right place at the right time.
"Ensuring that devices are available to support patients is very important to us," Mr. McGraw said. "As patients are admitted for care, the clinical team shouldn't have to spend time running around the hospital to find devices. Nurses need immediate access to the right equipment that's ready for use."
Conclusion
As hospitals and health systems face increased financial pressures and capital budget cuts, making intelligent and efficient clinical asset decisions is more important than ever. "It's important to unlock the value that's already within the system and that starts by understanding what devices healthcare organizations own, where those devices are located and how much they are used," Mr. McGraw said.