Today, I had a great conversation and dialogue with Scott Sullivan of UCSD (University of Southern California-San Diego) on the recent Awarepoint deployment at the Moores UCSDC Cancer Center. What is interesting is that UCSD is very forward thinking in its overall inventory IDN management strategy. They actually are looking at RTLS from a total integrated delivery model. For the past five years or even longer, traditional RTLS strategies have been somewhat limited to departmental solutions. This often is due to cost considerations of the technology and many are not able to quantify the real business value across multiple departments throughout the continuum of care. While clinically these limited deployments have some value to locate certain assets, the real supply value and ultimately derived financial ROI will be obtained by looking at RTLS from an enterprise perspective.
Since this Awarepoint solution it seems is non-disruptive for installation purposes,(Zigbee) is quick to deploy, actually works (meaning reliable), the clinicians have somewhat bought into this. (meaning they trust the data), this is a convergence factor of many sorts. This converged and reliable data is very important to improve the business process with meaningful location data at the grass roots clinical level. Clinicians do not need another technology layered on to them that does not provide value and helping them with patient care. Scott has also championed the different departmental areas across the Hillcrest, Thorton, and Moore Campuses, to look to novel ways to utilize this RTLS technology and the data obtained to improve their business practices.
One area of unique supply chain value in the operative area is the simple awareness of the medical instrumentation tray sets on a real time basis of which can translate into thousands of dollars of saved surgical time (even in minutes) and improved patient throughput. While a lot of RTLS solutions have “hyperfocused” on “where is the I.V. pump”?, while this is important, the OR is a high cost supply chain model. Knowing where your assets are, real time, for orthopedics, neurosurgical and cardiovascular, among other procedures just simply improves the overall operations. We discussed a lot of unique business models, and I suggested tracking medical implants. An actual example was having high value stock with sterility expiration dates on hand. In this case UCSD had 2 VAD(Ventricular Assist Devices), at $40,000 a piece that had to be written off, because there was no location awareness on a real-time basis. That is $80,000 that had to be written off to the bottom line.
The challenge for any RTLS system is that it has to provide value. This value translates that it simply has to be deployed everywhere. The caveats here are the cost to deploy, time to deploy, and actually does it really work.
While the issue of location accuracy (to a few meters), can be challenged; the reality is the hospitals can derive huge cost savings and real operational improvements IF a reliable RTLS system can be deployed, not on a departmental basis…but enterprise. It is a not of if but when. Once the model is in, then it can be continually used to improve day to day operations, translating in real hard dollar savings.
Some may not like this comparison, but the healthcare supply chain ecosystem is not unlike the DOD or other vertical markets.
Knowing where your assets are on a real time basis improves military readiness, and in the civilian sector provides better cost savings and improves real time supply distribution models.
It seems that the Awarepoint model is quick to deploy, provides a low cost solution, and is non disruptive from location awareness to the healthcare enterprise that translates into real value on a lot of levels. It is the author’s opinion that this is a major first step to providing real time inventory awareness across the integrated delivery network on multiple levels. It serves as the catalyst to drive forward improvements in operations because it is enterprise based. This is critical. Why this is critical is that for business processes to be improved they need to looked at from a holistic sense and quantified on the value (ROI), on both a CAPEX, OPEX, and TCO. It seems that Awarepoint perhaps fits this model.
