Medical Miscellanea

Lots of medical supplies have expiration dates, including saline, iodine pads and swabs (these have a relatively short shelf life), lubricant, tegaderm, G-Tube parts, and almost anything that comes in a tube.

This is a signifcant problem here. Not only do the expired items cost the hospital money, it's very likely that they're being used on patients after the expiration date. The good news is that now we're aware of it and have gotten rid of piles upon piles, but something needs to be done on a more fundamental level.

The problem comes from the stashes of supplies that people keep. There is also a problem with stocking supplies in rooms. It's a nice idea to stock rooms uniformly so that any service can step into any room with any patient and be able to do an appropriate exam. In practice, however, specific services use certain rooms 95% of the time. Service specific supplies are then used all the time in some rooms, and hardly ever in other rooms. The supplies in the 'hardly ever' rooms grow old and expire.

That's the reality. What we need to do is to reduce in-room inventories as much as possible, likely by creating pull systems. I think a kanban system might work, I also think we may move toward centralized, service specific trays or bins of supplies that PCC's can grab and take to the rooms at the start of the clinic day. At the end of the day, the tray would be removed and replenished for the next day.

We could stock rooms only with the minimum non-expiring or truly used by everyone supplies.