Blog - Mobile Aspects

Endoscope Channel Drying Is Essential for patient safety. Here’s why.

June 9, 2021Subhendu Pattnaik Hospital Management Infection Control Managing Endoscopes Patient Safety

With frequent outbreaks of superbugs being linked to poorly disinfected endoscopes over the last decade, ensuring the cleanliness of endoscopes has been top of mind for many hospitals. While many hospitals have been cited for poor disinfection practices with their endoscopes, there has also been a rise in attention around the effective drying of endoscopes after reprocessing. We’ve noted that some of the most common problems identified during endoscope drying and storage include a lack of channel drying and not storing endoscopes in a vertical hanging position. Inadequate drying of endoscope channels can cause the replication and survival of remaining pathogens during endoscope storage. The presence of potentially contaminated biologics in endoscope channels may promote bacterial proliferation and biofilm formation and lead to severe superbug outbreaks. The combination of inadequate drying and storage procedures with sub-standard cleaning and disinfection is detrimental to endoscope contamination and post-endoscopic infection.

Several guiding bodies, from the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to the Society for Gastroenterology Nurses and Associates (SGNA) have put out guidance stating that endoscopes must be properly dried following high-level disinfection (HLD) before contact with the next patient. While the concept is simple and widely understood in theory, it is not always adhered to in practice. One of the major reasons is that many busy hospitals and Endoscopy centers do not allow enough time from when scopes are unloaded from Automated Endoscope Reprocessors (AERs) to their use in a procedure. In situations like these, not allowing a scope to properly dry internally and externally increases the potential for disease transmission. Additionally, not allowing scopes to hang vertically to allow any moisture to drain properly post-HLD can allow moisture to build up inside the scope.

There are systems on the market that can help staff adhere to basic drying procedures such as blowing filtered air through channels and having scopes hang vertically in storage. One such system is iRIScope, a channel-drying endoscope storage cabinet using RFID technology from Mobile Aspects, which was introduced in the last several years to guide healthcare providers through the proper, society-recommended HLD protocols every single time a scope is disinfected. iRIScope cabinets are the world’s only endoscope cabinets with RFID technology, air drying and channel drying built in. RFID capabilities reduce unnecessary human touches by up to 75%, keeping scopes cleaner and safer. The system also includes smart storage cabinets that allow scopes to hang vertically with forced air running through the channels, drying endoscope channels in only 10 minutes.

With iRIScope software for endoscope tracking, sterile technicians will be guided through the entire HLD process to make sure that any potentially harmful diseases are minimized via proper HLD techniques. Built-in technology will even alert your staff if improperly reprocessed scopes are hung in storage, or if it is time to re-disinfect a scope based on local protocols. With a second pair of eyes always on your scopes, you can ensure that patients are kept safe while simultaneously following society and Joint Commission guidelines.

How Hospitals Can Help Offset the Rising Costs of Heart Valve Replacement Surgery

May 20, 2021Subhendu Pattnaik Hospital Finance Hospital Management Operational Efficiency Patient Safety Supply Chain The Business of Surgery

Due to an aging population, the number of patients with heart valve disease requiring valve replacement is expected to rise, reaching more than 800 000 annual procedures worldwide by 2050. The total cost of these surgeries is expected to grow by 10% through 2025, reaching over $10 billion. The cost of an average heart valve to hospitals is between $4,000 and $40,000, making up a large chunk of the revenue to the hospital of $80,000 to $200,000 per procedure.

In order to protect their margins on these procedures, hospitals must be vigilant in both managing and charging for their heart valve and TAVR/TAVI devices for each procedure. We often see that hospitals manage high-cost implants, such as valves, the same way as the rest of the general inventory. Most hospitals use traditional methods that rely on manual input and leave significant room for human error. A single expired valve or a missed charge on a valve costs a hospital thousands of dollars per incident, and the traditional methods of inventory management allow these events to happen more often than we’d like to believe. While systems fraught with human error may be manageable for low-cost supplies, they will lead to extremely negative financial outcomes when expensive devices like heart valves are managed the same way.

Solutions such as iRISupply supply and implant tracking software from Mobile Aspects aim to minimize human error in the inventory management and charge capture space by moving to automated technology. Software solutions like this use RFID technology to automatically assign each implant to the proper patient in the electronic medical record and generate an order to replace the implant. Additionally, reports can be automatically generated and sent electronically to notify the department’s inventory manager well in advance that an item is due to expire and can also provide real-time alerts if an expired item is taken for use in a procedure. In fact, one major academic medical center that uses iRISupply has gone over 3 years without a single heart valve expiring on its shelves.

If your hospital is still relying on manual systems or even barcode-based systems to manage expensive inventory like heart valves, it’s time to switch to a better inventory management system like iRISupply. With savings from reduced expirations and increased charge capture, the system will quickly pay for itself.

The Growing Cost of Medical Implants and How Proper Inventory Management Can Help

April 30, 2021Subhendu Pattnaik Hospital Finance Hospital Management Operational Efficiency Patient Safety Supply Chain The Business of Surgery

Costs of medical implants are growing rapidly and according to one recent estimate, the medical implants market reached $89.2 billion in 2020 and is growing at 6.5% annually. As implants are a required, rapidly growing expense for the healthcare industry, hospitals should manage their implant inventory consciously.

Surgery is an expensive and complicated endeavor, and if a surgery requires an implant like an artificial hip or a mesh graft, costs begin to rise quickly. The price of implants varies widely, but the fact that they must be sterile, made to perform for a lifetime, and require extensive R&D usually comes with a hefty price tag. While some procedures are less expensive than others, they will still range from a few thousand dollars all the way into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Current struggles by hospitals to control their spend on implants is only making the costs of surgery more expensive. There are many instances where implant inventory is poorly tracked, and the industry suffers high rates of product loss, expiration, and damage. This waste costs everyone in the supply chain – manufacturers, hospitals, patients, payers – billions of dollars per year in aggregate. Effective supply management can drastically reduce the cost of waste and reduce the need for high-cost, last-minute transportation.

Therefore, to conserve resources and reduce waste, inventory managers now more than ever need to focus on reducing spend on overstocked or unused implants and supplies. Data is the key to this analysis because without reliable, clean data it will be hard to convince physicians and nurses of the need to reduce PAR levels. If your procedural areas lack an easy-to-use data analytics tool, consider an implant and supply tracking system like iRISupply that combines inventory management software with powerful analytics. iRISupply will not only provide you with the usage data and reports you need to manage your inventory but will take it one step further and provide actionable recommendations about which products are overstocked, understocked or that can be eliminated altogether. Mobile Aspects experts will also sit down with you quarterly as part of a best-in-class customer success program to discuss strategies to perfect your inventory mix and review the data behind those suggestions. These recommendations can then be taken to physicians for review, a discussion that will lead to substantial savings for your department.

The healthcare market is moving quickly moving towards price transparency. This will require that healthcare professionals have access to cost-related information, even that which was previously undisclosed. The benefit of this, beyond giving individual consumers more responsibility for choosing cost-effective treatment, is that surgeons will be able to combat rising healthcare costs directly with wise decisions around which implants and supplies they use. With systems like iRISupply we are one step closer to providing surgeons and physicians the visibility into the price of implants that will empower strategic, data-driven change within healthcare.

Nurses Face Severe Challenges With Supply Chain Issues

April 21, 2021Sri Mandava Hospital Finance Hospital Management Operational Efficiency Patient Safety Supply Chain The Business of Surgery

A new survey conducted by Sage Growth Partners revealed that a vast majority of nurses feel overwhelmed with supply management tasks and are looking for better software tools to help alleviate the burden. The survey reached out to over 100 nurses – 50 nurse leaders and 50 front-line nurses – and asked them a series of question to find out how supply chain issues are affecting their performance and the quality of their department.

The survey asked respondents to give insights into several challenges they face with supply chain issues, and what effects these issues are having, from morale to patient safety to profitability. As this article by Carol Davis at HealthLeaders explains:

“Of 100 nurses surveyed—50 nurse leaders and 50 frontline nurses—in February, 86% said they leave procedures to hunt for supplies at least occasionally, according to the report.

Some 25% said they don’t always check product expiration or recall information, which increases risk of patient safety issues; 48% attributed this to lack of time.

Frontline nurses were more likely than nurse leaders to report frequent supply shortages, with nearly 10% more of them saying they occur often or occasionally, according to survey results.

The report also revealed a disconnect between nurse leaders and frontline nurses regarding how often nurses check product expiration and recall information prior to opening an item. While 84% of nurse leaders said their teams always check this information, only 66% of frontline nurses said they always check.

Other findings from the survey include:

Nurses encounter significant supply chain documentation problems

80% of nurses said they want more supply chain automation tools

95% said inaccurate physician preference cards decrease their efficiency

65% said their current supply documentation system is too time consuming

Supply chain problems take a significant toll on nurse stress and burnout

86% said their supply chain documentation system causes them stress

33% said hospital leadership is not working hard to reduce OR nurse stress

18% said they have considered leaving their current role due to supply chain problems

Supply chain problems result in excess waste and lower margins

76% of nurses said supply shortages are common, and 23% said that the greatest impact of this is reduced revenue
33% lack access to waste-reduction tools such as barcode scanning
12% said their OR wastes supplies in more than 25% of cases”

Read the article at: New Survey Reveals How Hospital Supply Chains Affect Nurses, Patient Safety, and Margins

As the article states, nurses are typically facing major issues with their hospital’s supply chain, leading to negative effects on job satisfaction, patient safety and profitability. One way healthcare providers can improve their nurses’ experience with the supply chain is to give them access to some of the more cutting-edge systems that are taking on inventory management challenges in hospitals. For example, RFID-based systems such as iRISupply supply and implant tracking software, can provide high quality data by integrating RFID data capture technology into the supply chain. This reduces the manual effort required to perform supply chain-related tasks, such as documenting usage, checking for expirations and re-ordering inventory. This also drastically cuts down on stock-outs and increases transparency of product location, reducing many headaches for nurses. With nurses playing such a vital role in today’s healthcare delivery model, it’s extremely important for hospital executives to provide them with the right tools to succeed in their jobs.

How Supply Chain in the Healthcare Industry has Evolved, and Where It’s Going From Here

April 15, 2021Subhendu Pattnaik Hospital Finance Revenue Cycle Supply Chain The Business of Surgery

Healthcare supply chain management has come a long way. Just a decade ago the supply chain in hospitals included mainly manual processes for obtaining resources, managing supplies, and delivering goods and services to providers and patients.

Now, most hospitals no longer rely on manual processes to keep track of their supplies. While there are still a dizzying number of products and services that go through a hospital’s supply chain, along with an array of stakeholders, technology is helping to close the data gap in hospitals. Pen and paper have mainly been replaced as technology in supply chain management has evolved, and the industry is continuing to see considerable changes.

Where is healthcare supply chain management today?

Providers use a myriad of items, from medical devices to prescription drugs, personal protective equipment, office supplies, and computers. Employees involved in healthcare supply chain management are responsible for keeping stock levels that meet providers’ needs and making sure that inventory is properly maintained and recorded. However, managing the supply chain is not as simple as making sure providers have enough gloves.

The healthcare supply chain starts at the medical product manufacturer where items are produced and sent to a distribution center. Depending on the type of product, hospitals can either purchase inventory directly through the manufacturer or distributor, or the transaction can be conducted through a group buying organization, which establishes a purchasing contract with the manufacturer on behalf of the hospital.

Medical products are then sent to the healthcare organization, where the goods are stocked in inventory for providers and patients. The organization ensures that providers are not left without essential medical products and patients have access to potentially life-saving tools.

All of these steps in the supply chain rely on some degree of manual work complemented by some automating technologies such as barcodes or supply chain management software. However, because of the number of vendors and other stakeholders involved, the quality of the data in the supply chain isn’t ideal. This leaves hospitals lacking the data they need to drive a lot of the waste out of their organization and prevents them from negotiating the best deals with their vendors.

Where is healthcare supply chain management going from here?

The primary technology used as hospitals migrated away from pen and paper processes was barcode technology. Barcodes had exploded in retail industries over the last 30 years and became a mainstay in hospital supply chain management over the last 15 years or so.

Many healthcare organizations have found the data provided by automatic data capture technologies such as barcodes to be invaluable. By harnessing pricing and usage data, healthcare organizations can track and manage inventory more efficiently and construct more informed purchasing contracts with manufacturers. These insights through accurate data have saved hospitals untold sums of money.

Now, many hospitals and healthcare providers are looking to take the next step in their supply chain technology evolution. While barcodes were a huge step forward from pen and paper-based processes, they still left a lot of data on the table. Barcode technology requires user compliance to physically scan the barcodes on each box, which isn’t always a guarantee in healthcare. In fact, about 15-25% of all data goes unrecorded due to users not scanning barcodes. Barcodes also require laborious reconciliations to make sure that stock levels are accurate, again because users aren’t habitually scanning barcodes.

Hospital supply chain departments are now looking to smart, RFID-based supply tracking systems that can track real-time inventories without reconciliations and keep an accurate, real-time record of inventory usage. With this data, these systems offer up valuable insights that help to continuously improve PAR levels through data driven analysis. Hospitals typically suffer from overstocking or hoarding as a reaction to running out of stock when it is most needed. By having great data and planning properly, inventory levels can be minimized while ensuring stockouts no longer happen.

Advanced supply tracking systems such as iRISupply from Mobile Aspects can also reduce the amount of manual work needed to manage and re-order supplies. The biggest time savers are 1) the elimination of reconciling inventory to produce an exact on-hand inventory count and 2) moving from eyeballing of inventory to figure out what to order to having inventory management software tell you exactly what’s needed each day. Additionally, setting up an interface with the materials management system will automatically re-order inventory and reduce the time employees spend managing inventory. As the pandemic rages on, today’s healthcare environment is calling for hospitals and health systems to rein in their costs. More than ever now is the time for academic hospitals to invest in an Enterprise-Wide Supply Tracking System.

Hospitals need to have the data to react quickly to a dynamic healthcare environment. Therefore, a supply chain should be constantly on the lookout for new technologies that will help them to meet their mission. As barcodes make way for RFID technology, the industry will be looking for the next great technology breakthrough.

FDA Issues New Warning About Infection Risks From Urological Endoscopes

April 7, 2021Sri Mandava Hospital Management Infection Control Managing Endoscopes Patient Safety

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently released a letter to healthcare providers warning about the risk of infection associated with poorly reprocessed urological endoscopes. The letter from the FDA mentions that there have been over 450 Medical Device Reports filed by healthcare facilities that detail the patient infections associated with contaminated cystoscopes, ureteroscopes and cystourethroscopes.

The FDA is currently investigating the causes and contributing factors for the infections. While the reports point to potential issues with reprocessing or maintenance, the investigation is in its early stages. With further action likely based on the results of the FDA investigation, healthcare facilities should continue to monitor the situation. As the FDA letter summarizes:

“Since 2017, the FDA has received over 450 Medical Device Reports (MDRs) which describe patient infections post procedure or other possible contamination issues associated with reprocessing these devices. In those reports which provided the name of the device manufacturer, either Olympus Corporation or Karl Storz were cited. However, the FDA has not concluded that such risks are limited to a particular manufacturers’ devices nor that any specific manufacturer or brand of these devices is associated with higher risks than others. Of these reports, there were three death reports which occurred outside of the United States, submitted by Olympus Corporation. The three reports describe patients who developed Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections post procedure. Two of the death reports were associated with the use of a forceps/irrigation plug (MAJ-891), which is an accessory component used to control water flow and enable access to the working channel of the endoscope. It was reported by Olympus that the isolates from clinical samples matched strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from the forceps/irrigation plug (MAJ-891). The third patient death involved a cystoscope, and the report noted that the cystoscope did not pass a leak test. Failure to pass a leak test indicates the cystoscope was damaged and could be a potential source of infection. It is unknown whether or to what degree the reported infections contributed to the patient deaths, and patient co-morbidities may have been a factor. MDRs are not, by themselves, definitive evidence of a faulty or defective medical device, and cannot be used to establish or compare rates of event occurrence.”

Additionally, the FDA recommends that healthcare providers do the following:

“Carefully follow the reprocessing instructions described in the manufacturer’s instructions for use.
- Reprocessing steps should include one of the following two options:
  - Precleaning, leak testing, cleaning, disinfecting, rinsing and drying; or
  - Precleaning, leak testing, cleaning, and sterilization.
- Be aware that reusable accessory components may have separate reprocessing instructions.
- Be sure to follow the applicable instructions for disassembly of the endoscope and other components when reprocessing.
Do not use damaged devices or those that have failed a leak test, as they could be a potential source of contamination.
Develop schedules for routine inspection and periodic maintenance in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions.
Discuss the benefits and risks associated with procedures involving reprocessed urological endoscopes with your patients.”

Read the entire letter here: Infections Associated with Reprocessed Urological Endoscopes – Letter to Health Care Providers

This letter from the FDA represents only the most recent in a line of notices about the dangers that poorly disinfected endoscopes pose to patients. Hospitals must ensure that they’re doing everything they can to protect themselves and their patients from harm. The letter points out that the issues most likely stem from poor reprocessing or maintenance issues. To reduce risk, make sure that your staff is following the proper processes and protocols each and every time an endoscope is reprocessed. Endoscope tracking software such as iRIScope can display the proper workflow for reprocessing endoscopes and document the process electronically. Any breaches of protocol can be discovered in real-time to protect patients and identify which staff members need additional training on reprocessing techniques. You owe it to your staff and your patients to offer everyone the peace of mind that urological endoscopes and flexible endoscopes in general are being properly reprocessed every single time.

How One Hospital Used Data To Cut Its Endoscope Reprocessing Time In Half

March 25, 2021Subhendu Pattnaik Hospital Finance Hospital Management Managing Endoscopes Operational Efficiency

High-quality endoscope reprocessing is paramount for patient safety, but hospitals must also make sure that they are being efficient in reprocessing to maintain a profitable operation. Many patient safety hazards can occur if a single process is skipped or mishandled, so hospitals must be thorough in their processes. As hospitals are continually trying to find new ways to become more efficient, staff are also being pushed to increase reprocessing quality while reducing their reprocessing times. While these priorities are often at odds, here is how one major hospital accomplished exactly this feat.

A major academic medical center in Pennsylvania has been using Mobile Aspects’ endoscope tracking system to electronically capture all endoscope reprocessing and storage transactions for several years. They initially acquired iRIScope to meet and exceed The Joint Commission (TJC) regulations around endoscope documentation and clean storage. Mobile Aspects’ iRIscope smart cabinets and reprocessing software capture critical scope data points. Utilizing the data from iRIScope, hospital staff can learn all the details about a scope’s lifecycle – for instance who removed the scope, what procedure it was used in, when the scope was removed and cleaned, etc. This helped the hospital to understand the various bottlenecks its scopes were facing during their lifecycle.

In addition, the hospital started to notice other variables that were causing problems for hospital staff while managing their scopes. Scopes were often used on weekends or by other departments. In these cases, it was difficult for the hospital staff to figure out the location and status of a scope after a procedure. This reduced the availability of scopes when they were critically needed for the next procedure.

In order to reduce their bottlenecks and create a more efficient reprocessing cycle, the hospital analyzed the timestamp data coming out of iRIScope. Based on the data, they were able to find inefficient staff members and offer training and retraining to improve reprocessing efficiency. They were also able to identify which steps were taking the most time to complete and further reduce bottlenecks by making sure scopes didn’t linger in any step for too long. Using this data, the hospital was able to reduce the average reprocessing cycle to less than an hour for pre-cleaning and high-level disinfection.

Another large bottleneck that the hospital identified was the time it took for scopes to be transported – both between procedure rooms and sterile processing (SPD) and between SPD and clean storage. The data was showing that the time it was taking for scopes to arrive back in SPD after a procedure was as long as 10 to 12 hours. After each scope completed its high-level disinfection, it was taking up to another 5 hours just to reach clean storage. Once these bottlenecks were identified, the hospital was then able to work with Mobile Aspects to reduce these turnaround times. For example, the hospital implemented alerts that were sent if the staff were not able to return the scope to clean storage within 4 hours of high-level disinfection.

By chipping away at these inefficient processes, the hospital was able to dramatically decrease the average turnaround time between when a scope was removed from a clean storage cabinet for a procedure and when it was returned to clean storage after reprocessing. The turnaround time was reduced by over 50%, from just over 10 hours to just under 5 hours on average. This reduction led to an increase in availability of scopes, which reduced procedure delays or cancellations and increased the overall profitability of their endoscopy practice.

Burnout in the Healthcare Industry and How Better Technology Can Help To Alleviate It

March 12, 2021Subhendu Pattnaik Clinical Documentation Hospital Management Operational Efficiency

We are in midst of a global pandemic, with healthcare providers on the frontlines struggling to keep up with the needs of patients who are fighting COVID-19. Amid uncertainties, changing guidelines, and intermittent access to personal protective equipment, there have been increasingly burdensome demands placed on healthcare providers all over the world. Even before the pandemic, there existed a growing trend of nurses and doctors experiencing burnout due to the administrative pressures of keeping up with tools like electronic medical records (EMRs) on top of their patient-focused work.

What is Burnout?

Burnout syndrome, known as BOS, refers to the experience of fatigue for extended periods and reduced levels of motivation and interest in the job which leads to decreased job productivity. This is a result of too much effort in the workplace with limited opportunities for recovery. Another definition of burnout is emotional exhaustion from work-related pressure, which can result in physical symptoms.

As the effects of the pandemic continue to take a toll on our daily lives, the extended pressures at work result in healthcare professionals who are susceptible to burnout. Studies demonstrate that burnout in healthcare officials can lead to the following consequences:

Decreased quality of care for patients.
Increased risk of making medical errors.
Reduced patient satisfaction.
Increased hospital-acquired infections.
Higher rates of job turnover.

How Mobile Aspects is Helping Hospitals to Reduce Burnout in the Healthcare Industry

There are many ways a hospital can help its employees to minimize the effects of burnout. They must start by arming their staff with the necessary tools to reduce their administrative burden while providing quality care to their patients.

One way that hospitals can reduce the burden on clinicians is to eliminate redundant tasks in the EMR. Automated data capture systems, such as iRISupply from Mobile Aspects, can provide high-quality data by integrating RFID data capture technology directly into your EMR, eliminating the need to have clinicians re-enter supply and implant information into the EMR during hectic procedures. These technologies and many others can help clinicians reduce their administrative headaches to improve job satisfaction. Going from having to enter information manually in 2 or 3 different systems to having a single automated system capture and document all of the information electronically can be a game-changer for clinicians.

Mobile Aspects also has tissue and endoscope management systems that similarly reduce the documentation burden on clinicians. These systems help hospitals to rid themselves of paper logbooks and the files of printed tickets by enabling electronic documentation. These systems are especially helpful in cases of patient safety incidents, which currently require clinicians to pore over reams of logbooks or paper tickets during their investigations. Moving to an electronic system where data can be searched in seconds, rather than in hours or days, can be especially helpful for reducing clinician burnout.

We take great pride in our ability to provide a unique experience for our customers that delivers on our promise to help hospitals improve their operational efficiency and increase patient safety. We look forward to helping our hospital customers in these difficult times and do our best to improve staff morale with our products.

Hospitals Are Being Penalized By CMS For Hospital Acquired Infections – How Can They Stop The Bleeding?

February 25, 2021Sri Mandava Hospital Finance Hospital Management Infection Control Patient Safety

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has released its list of penalized hospitals for 2021 under its Hospital-Acquired Conditions Reduction Program. This year’s list includes 774 hospitals that will have their Medicare payments cut by 1% for the remainder of the year. The 774 hospitals represent the bottom quartile of hospitals in terms of hospital-acquired infections.

A hospital’s rating is based on several quality measures such as rates of infection, blood clots, bedsores, and other complications. Despite industry concerns about the program’s design, there doesn’t appear to be any end in sight to the annual penalty. As this article by Jordan Rau at KHN explains:

“The penalties, based on patients who stayed in the hospitals anytime between mid-2017 and 2019, before the pandemic, are not related to covid-19. They were levied under a program created by the Affordable Care Act that uses the threat of losing Medicare money to motivate hospitals to protect patients from harm.

On any given day, one in every 31 hospital patients has an infection that was contracted during their stay, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Infections and other complications can prolong hospital stays, complicate treatments and, in the worst instances, kill patients.

“Although significant progress has been made in preventing some healthcare-associated infection types, there is much more work to be done,” the CDC says.

Now in its seventh year, the Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program has been greeted with disapproval and resignation by hospitals, which argue that penalties are meted out arbitrarily. Under the law, Medicare each year must punish the quarter of general care hospitals with the highest rates of patient safety issues. The government assesses the rates of infections, blood clots, sepsis cases, bedsores, hip fractures and other complications that occur in hospitals and might have been prevented. The total penalty amount is based on how much Medicare pays each hospital during the federal fiscal year — from last October through September.

Hospitals can be punished even if they have improved over past years — and some have. At times, the difference in infection and complication rates between the hospitals that get punished and those that escape punishment is negligible, but the requirement to penalize one-quarter of hospitals is unbending under the law. Akin Demehin, director of policy at the American Hospital Association, said the penalties were “a game of chance” based on “badly flawed” measures.

Some hospitals insist they received penalties because they were more thorough than others in finding and reporting infections and other complications to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the CDC.

“The all-or-none penalty is unlike any other in Medicare’s programs,” said Dr. Karl Bilimoria, vice president for quality at Northwestern Medicine, whose flagship Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago was penalized this year. He said Northwestern takes the penalty seriously because of the amount of money at stake, “but, at the same time, we know that we will have some trouble with some of the measures because we do a really good job identifying” complications.

Other renowned hospitals penalized this year include Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles; UCSF Medical Center in San Francisco; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Tufts Medical Center in Boston; NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York; UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside in Pittsburgh; and Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

…Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess said in a statement that “we employ a broad range of patient care quality efforts and use reports such as those from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to identify and address opportunities for improvement.”

UCSF Health said its hospital has made “significant improvements” since the period Medicare measured in assessing the penalty.

“UCSF Health believes that many of the measures listed in the report are meaningful to patients, and are also valid standards for health systems to improve upon,” the hospital-health system said in a statement to KHN. “Some of the categories, however, are not risk-adjusted, which results in misleading and inaccurate comparisons.”

Cedars-Sinai said the penalty program disproportionally punishes academic medical centers due to the “high acuity and complexity” of their patients, details that aren’t captured in the Medicare billing data.

“These claims data were not designed for this purpose and are typically not specific enough to reflect the nuances of complex clinical care,” the hospital said. “Cedars-Sinai continually tracks and monitors rates of complications and infections, and updates processes to improve the care we deliver to our patients.””

Read the entire article here: Medicare Cuts Payment to 774 Hospitals Over Patient Complications

Many hospitals across the US, even some of the most prestigious, must continue to focus on reducing hospital acquired infections (HAIs) to improve patient safety and to increase their bottom line. Hospitals must ensure staff are trained on general infection control principles and they must be prepared to constantly monitor and improve their practices. To ensure that your staff is following best practices surrounding HAIs, install additional checks and balances into your workflow so that you can document that your staff is following the same process each time. Software systems such as iRIScope for endoscope reprocessing and iRISecure for tissue documentation have been introduced in recent years to help hospitals and surgery centers ensure that each of their assets and biologics are handled the same way each time using advanced RFID technology. With these systems in place, staff can be more confident that their close adherence to best practices will result in a reduction in HAIs across the hospital.

Mobile Aspects Releases Software To Streamline Blood Bag Management In Hospitals

February 10, 2021Subhendu Pattnaik Blood Management Clinical Documentation Hospital Management Infection Control Patient Safety Regulatory Compliance The Business of Surgery

Why is Blood Bag Tracking Necessary?

In many hospitals across the world, the tracking and documentation of blood bags are inherently difficult processes. Blood bags are typically stored in fridges and cooling chambers in central areas of the hospital such as the Emergency Department. When transfusion becomes necessary during a surgery, one or many blood bags are brought to the operating room quickly and often are used in life-saving procedures. The danger and risk are high for both the patient and hospital.

Due to the often frantic nature of the usage of blood bags, the required documentation isn’t always properly completed. Nurses are correctly concerned with the goal of quickly getting blood to patients in need, but this often comes at the expense of quality documentation that ensures all regulatory requirements are met by the hospital. Mobile Aspects’ iRISecure – Blood Tracking solution, which is a powerful, simple-to-use RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tracking solution for blood inventory, automates the documentation surrounding the storage and use of blood. The system helps to improve patient safety and inventory management of blood products and ensures the safe and timely delivery of blood transfusions to patients.

Benefits of a Blood Tracking System

iRISecure Blood was designed to bring many patient safety and financial benefits to hospitals. The system focuses on the documentation and inventory management aspects of blood bags, which can have numerous benefits to customers:

Increased Patient Safety

With iRISecure – Blood Tracking, hospitals can increase patient safety by ensuring that the right blood is given to the right patient every time. The software includes the following features that improve patient safety:

Real-time alerts are sent by iRISecure – Blood Tracking to ensure that mismatches between patients and blood types do not occur.
Built-in RFID technology reduces mis-labeling issues by eliminating poorly inputted data from manual data entry.
Re-issue data tracking to make sure blood stays within guidelines when removed and returned from storage.

Improved Inventory Control

iRISecure – Blood Tracking provides a real-time view of blood inventory to all areas of the hospital. Having a fully visible and accurate inventory helps improve the management of blood and decreases waste. The software includes the following features that improve inventory control:

A complete inventory management system that lets you know when it is time to re-order blood products.
Advanced analytics that help to prevent stock-outs by adjusting inventory levels according to actual usage history.
Web-based platform that allows you to locate required blood in an instant.
Real-time, automated expiration reports that allow you to monitor the expiration of blood and components.

Eliminate Manual Processes

Using RFID technology, iRISecure – Blood Tracking simplifies the record-keeping of blood in accordance with AABB and FDA regulations. iRISecure – Blood Tracking can:

Meet traceability requirements by capturing all item-level blood details and associating blood to the correct patient.
Automatically record the dispensation of blood on the patient’s electronic medical record (EMR) via electronic messages.
Reduce employee documentation requirements while increasing patient safety by enforcing a standard workflow.

Robust Analytics

The data captured by iRISecure –- Blood Tracking allows the system to generate reports and analytics which will allow your blood management process to continuously improve over time. Some examples of the insights include:

Measuring frequently used blood products and providing recommendations on changing stock levels based on actual usage data.
Expiration reports that measure how frequently blood products are expiring before usage.
Tracking the average time it takes for blood to go from one checkpoint to another using the timestamp data automatically collected by the system.
Holding employees accountable by tracking which employees are following the standard workflows and which are not.

Seamless EMR AND HIS Integration

iRISecure – Blood Tracking integrates directly with the hospital’s EMR, laboratory information system and other hospital information systems (HIS). This allows for the real-time, effortless documentation of blood without manual entry. Mobile Aspects will customize its interfaces to match any hospital’s systems and all data will be protected by your hospital’s security system to ensure patient information is safe.

Reduced Cost And Less Waste

The costs to a healthcare institution can be severe whenever the wrong blood type is delivered to a patient. iRISecure – Blood Tracking performs periodic safety checks to ensure that the right blood reaches the right patient every time. The system also includes a comprehensive inventory management system to make sure that the proper blood types are always kept in stock and replenished as needed. Overall, iRISecure – Blood Tracking will help reduce inventory costs and increase staff efficiency and productivity by automating many of the manual tasks around blood storage and dispensation. For more information, sign up for a free virtual demo by visiting HERE.

The Blog