In an ideal world, vendors and manufacturers would consult with both Sterile Processing and Operating Room professionals as they build their products. This would ensure that any products put in place would help solve the chaotic nature of these departments rather than add to it. What if you were to learn that there is a solution that has taken this approach? A solution that turns chaos into consistency. 

Introducing Surgio Health, a Surgical Logistics Management partner for leading IDNs and healthcare facilities. As an inter-departmental solution, they deliver an innovative suite of SPD-focused solutions that lower costs, mitigate risk, and improve quality. A fully-loaded surgical instrument tracking software that addresses everything from communication and visibility, to the data that you need as a leader to finally explain things such as the “why” behind delayed cases or your success in reducing surgical site infection rates.

Learn more about the only system that creates inter-departmental alignment and consistent expectations for vendors and hospital departments alike, so everyone is more comfortable going into those busy loaner tray days.

From a vendor perspective, what are the things that need to be improved upon today?

Being a medical device rep in the past, I remember being down in the SPD with trauma trays that I had just delivered. I saw first-hand how chaotic the environment was and how quickly those trays were taken up to the OR and immediately implanted into a patient. There was all this paper tracking, handwritten items, and I’m sitting there with my phone and laptop thinking, “This is just crazy that we don’t have a better system for this in place”.

It was clear where many of the issues were arising. On average, 25% of surgical trays are delivered late, impacting productivity and efficiency in sterile processing let alone increasing case delays. With Surgio Vendor, advanced tray scheduling ensures streamlined consistency from your vendors to reduce downtime and hospital cost. 

A lot of the challenges end up arising due to a lack of consistent processes. From the vendor’s perspective, they might hear about the case from the surgical coordinator for that department, from the surgeon, or from the case scheduler at the surgeon’s office. Every facility runs differently.

Even after a vendor has dropped off a tray, you’re not 100% certain that it actually got processed. We wanted to build this system to take that into account and make sure that we’re giving feedback to the vendors and to the hospital to create a clear consistent process that provides alignment for everyone involved. 

Many issues that arise between the OR, SPD, surgeons, and the vendor are the result of a lack of clarity in who did what. Because of this, we’ve prioritized capturing actionable data and making it accessible. No matter what happens, it can be a horrible day, but if we don’t have data on why it was so horrible, there’s no way to fix it.Without the data, we cannot improve the process. 

This is such a crucial piece to the larger puzzle about how patients’ safety flows out of sterile processing. To make that effective, you have to have data coming into sterile processing and that’s one of the biggest things that have been missing in these types of workflows.

Finding common ground with vendors and sterile processing departments

We knew what the problem was and knew what we wanted to solve. So, instead of fixing it in a vacuum, we reached out and worked directly with the people in the field to understand problems such as loaner instrument tray management, surgical tray tracking, consignment versus loaner tray management and many more. We needed to find a way to solve for these problems in order to help sterile processing departments become more efficient. 

Being a software company, it took some time and effort to build, making sure everyone’s voices were heard. Were there surprises along the way? Absolutely. Simply put, we weren’t prepared for just how broken the system was. 

Knowing how chaotic OR and sterilization departments are, we needed to think from a digital governance perspective about questions such as:

• How do we create a solution that alleviates chaos in the OR? 
• What about within the SPD? 
• How do you manage that process effectively? 
• How can we give the technicians, managers, and the OR staff a tool they can use to help mitigate any mistakes that are made within such a chaotic environment? 

On top of all this, vendors oftentimes deliver loaner trays at the last minute, creating a sense of even greater mayhem let alone impacting patient safety. How can we ensure all departments are aware of the trays coming in and when? How can we peel back the onion to understand what is causing these issues? 

We quickly realized that every facility we worked with had these problems. We had to look for common ground in order to build a solution for the entire industry as opposed to one particular facility.

The vast experience of everyone involved comes from many different perspectives, which collectively helped us craft a dynamic solution for what we believe is a real-time problem in the industry today. We needed simple, yet modern technology that can be integrated seamlessly.

Looking to lower cost and mitigate risk at your facility?

Chat with a member of our Surgio Health team today!