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FDA Issues Emergency Order Allowing Up To 4 Million Decontaminated N95 Masks Per Day

April 24, 2020Sri Mandava Cost Reduction Hospital Finance Hospital Management Infection Control Operational Efficiency Patient Safety Supply Chain The Business of Surgery

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an emergency order that allows hospitals and health systems to decontaminate N95 respirator masks up to 10 times before they are to be disposed. As hospitals are facing an extreme shortage of PPE due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this will be a welcome piece of news as hospitals continue to prepare for further waves of Covid-19 patients.

The FDA believes that as many as 4 million masks can be decontaminated and re-used daily in the US under this emergency order. The emergency use authorization (EUA) was issued to Steris, which believes its sterilization systems can be effectively used to re-process N95 and similar masks for re-use. This article by Brian Ward at Accreditation & Quality Compliance Center further explains:

“Authorizing this sterilization system will make it easier for hospitals to ensure that heroic healthcare workers on the frontlines have the protection they need,” wrote HHS Secretary Alex Azar. “Thanks to rapid work by the men and women of the FDA and President Trump’s vision for an all-of-America response, innovators are giving our healthcare warriors new tools nearly every day to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The process has N95 masks placed in a room, sprayed with vaporized hydrogen peroxide using a special machine, and left to dry. A mask can be reprocessed up to 10 times for single-user reuse. Studies have demonstrated that this method:

Decontaminates the mask material

Doesn’t degrade the mask material’s ability to filter particulates

Doesn’t affect mask fit

Doesn’t create any toxic byproducts

EUAs were issued to Battelle Memorial Institute and STERIS. The latter sells the hydrogen peroxide sterilizing equipment, with units 6,300 healthcare facilities equipped STERIS decontamination units. Depending on the unit, it can take between 24 and 55 minutes per reprocessed mask, with a single unit reprocessing about 480 respirators daily.”

Read the full article here: FDA Says 4 Million N95 Masks Could Be Reused Thanks To Emergency Order

In order to effectively track sterilized N95 masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) and stay within usage limits, hospitals and health systems must have the proper protocols and tracking mechanisms in place. Mobile Aspects has developed a unique software tracking system to address this specific challenge. The system works by tracking the number of uses of each piece of PPE using RFID technology to track usage counts at the item level. Whenever an item reaches its usage limit, users will immediately be notified to discard the item. If anyone tries to use PPE past its usage limits, alerts will go out so that the user can be notified. And if anyone is in possession of multiple pieces of in-demand PPE, administrators will be notified so they can instruct the employee to return their excess PPE. With this system in place, hospitals and healthcare systems can be assured that sterilized PPE is being used only as recommended, no more and no less.

If your facility is exploring ways to track sterilized PPE, contact Mobile Aspects to find out more about its innovative new software.

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Pittsburgh-Based Healthcare System Announces Program To Support N95 Mask Sterilization

April 16, 2020Sri Mandava Cost Reduction Hospital Finance Hospital Management Infection Control Operational Efficiency Patient Safety Supply Chain The Business of Surgery

Allegheny Health Network (AHN), an integrated healthcare delivery system based in Western Pennsylvania, announced that it has begun sterilizing N95 masks so they can be worn multiple times by hospital workers. As hospitals are facing an extreme shortage of PPE due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many are now implementing systems that will help them reprocess certain items for multiple uses in order to alleviate their supply problems.

AHN announced that it began sterilizing N95 masks for re-use at nine of its surgical hospitals. The hope is to extend the life of each mask for as long as there is a shortage of critical PPE. As this press release explains:

“With masks and other kinds of personal protective equipment in short supply, AHN and Highmark Health have been working tirelessly to ensure that our patients are safe and that our clinical employees always have the protective equipment they need,” said Sricharan Chalikonda, MD, Chief Medical Operations Officer, AHN. “Sometimes, that means finding new sources for those products. In this case, we have developed an outside-of-the-box approach to make more efficient use of the products we already have on hand.”

Normally, disposable masks such as N-95s are not permitted to be reused. But because of an ongoing supply shortage driven by the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA is temporarily authorizing health care providers to sterilize masks for re-use with in-house sterilization equipment that is typically used to sterilize and decontaminate surgical tools and other health care instrumentation.

But with AHN and most other health systems postponing elective surgeries, those machines are now available for other uses. AHN’s perioperative surgical team and its nursing staff spent the last week designing and implementing a system that would allow the masks to be collected, brought to the hospitals’ central sterilization departments, and redistributed.

“Re-using the N95 respirators produces a number of benefits,” said Hope Waltenbaugh, MSN, RN, AHN’s vice president of surgical services.

“First and foremost, it prolongs the life of our masks and helps to ensure that our front-line caregivers are always protected. It also cuts down on hospital waste, and potentially opens the door to sterilizing and re-processing other types of masks, or other forms of personal protective equipment.”

N95 respirator masks are different than surgical “ear loop” masks; they are tight-fitting devices that reduce the wearer’s exposure to airborne particles, including large droplets and aerosolized particles. They are used in environments where there is high risk of exposure to airborne agents, and are critical resources for health care workers who are treating or collecting samples from COVID-19 patients.

Once used masks have been delivered to the hospital’s central sterilization department, they’ll be inspected for wear and tear, elastic damage, stains, makeup, or any other imperfection. Damaged masks will be discarded.

Masks that are selected for reuse will then be sealed into sterilizing peel-pack envelopes and loaded into the sterilization machine, which can accommodate up to 40 masks per load. Before the masks are sterilized, they will be tagged with a tape strip, to mark it as a recycled mask.

The N95 masks can be recycled twice before being discarded. AHN hopes that it will eventually be able to recycle more than 80 percent of its N95 masks.

Each load takes about 45 minutes to complete, and each machine can sterilize about 15 loads per day, using hydrogen peroxide vapor. Previous studies conducted by Duke University and others have demonstrated that N95 respirators still meet performance requirements even after 50 decontaminations with this process.

Allegheny General Hospital and West Penn Hospital will have two mask-sterilizing machines on site; the rest of AHN’s hospitals will have one. At full capacity, machines across the network could collectively recycle more than 6,000 masks per day, with the help of AHN’s central sterilization technicians.”

Read the full press release here: Allegheny Health Network Launches Mask Sterilization and Re-use Program to Support COVID-19 Pandemic Response Efforts

In order to effectively track sterilized PPE and stay within usage limits, hospitals and health systems must have the proper protocols and tracking mechanisms in place. Mobile Aspects has developed a unique software tracking system to address this specific challenge. The system works by tracking the number of uses of each piece of PPE using RFID technology to track usage counts at the item level. Whenever an item reaches its usage limit, users will immediately be notified to discard the item. If anyone tries to use PPE past its usage limits, alerts will go out so that the user can be notified. And if anyone is in possession of multiple pieces of in-demand PPE, administrators will be notified so they can instruct the employee to return their excess PPE. With this system in place, hospitals and healthcare systems can be assured that sterilized PPE is being used only as recommended, no more and no less.

If your facility is exploring ways to track sterilized PPE, contact Mobile Aspects to find out more about its innovative new software.

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Mobile Aspects Announces System To Track Reprocessed Personal Protective Equipment Including N95 Masks

April 9, 2020Sri Mandava Cost Reduction Hospital Finance Hospital Management Infection Control Operational Efficiency Patient Safety Supply Chain The Business of Surgery

Mobile Aspects, a leading provider of software for supply and asset tracking systems in hospitals, has announced a new product to help in the ongoing fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. The company is building off of its 20-year history of delivering systems that help hospitals automate the tracking and documentation of supplies and assets within hospitals. The new software will help track the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE), such as N95 masks, that are currently facing overwhelming demand due to Covid-19.

As hospitals are facing an extreme shortage of PPE, many are now investigating or implementing systems that will help them reprocess certain items for multiple uses in order to alleviate their supply problems. Several US hospitals have already implemented or are planning to implement N95 mask sterilization due to extreme or projected shortages. These systems utilize various sterilization methods such as hydrogen peroxide or ultraviolet light to allow for the reuse of PPE.

While the ability to reprocess PPE such as N95 masks during the Covid-19 crisis is a huge relief (the FDA has recently lifted its guidance to not sterilize masks), the new techniques will come with their own challenges. Each hospital will use its own set of protocols that limit how many reuses each set of PPE can have before it loses its efficacy, and early research shows that these limits could be between 20 to 50 times. However, these same hospitals will have to ensure that they use the equipment only up to the limit to ensure both patient safety and financial benefit. Using the PPE too few times will lead to lost dollars while using them too many times will lead to compromised patient safety.

In order to effectively track sterilized PPE and stay within usage limits, hospitals must have the proper protocols and tracking mechanisms in place. Mobile Aspects has developed a unique software tracking system to address this specific challenge. The system works by tracking the number of uses of each piece of PPE using RFID technology to track usage counts at the item level. Whenever an item reaches its usage limit, users will immediately be notified to discard the item. If anyone tries to use PPE past its usage limits, alerts will go out so that the user can be notified. And if anyone is in possession of multiple pieces of in-demand PPE, administrators will be notified so they can instruct the employee to return their excess PPE. With this system in place, hospitals and healthcare systems can be assured that sterilized PPE is being used only as recommended, no more and no less.

If your facility is exploring ways to track sterilized PPE, contact Mobile Aspects to find out more about its innovative new software.

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Hospitals Look To Reprocess N95 Masks Due To Covid-19 Related Shortage

April 2, 2020Sri Mandava Hospital Management Infection Control Operational Efficiency Regulatory Compliance Supply Chain

In the ongoing battle against Covid-19, much of the US healthcare system has suffered from a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) for its frontline employees. The shortage of this important protective gear has led to hospital workers being put in needless danger of catching the extremely communicable coronavirus.

One company has been working on a special project to allow certain PPE, such as the N95 masks that have been critically needed by employees fighting Covid-19, to be decontaminated after each use to help alleviate the supply shortage. As this article by Conor Hale at FierceBiotech describes:

“Battelle received an emergency go-ahead from the FDA over the weekend to deploy its decontamination system for personal protective equipment (PPE), allowing healthcare workers to clean and reuse scarce N95 respirator masks.

The system is currently operating at Battelle’s Ohio facility—capable of processing up to 80,000 masks per machine, per day, within what looks like a large metal shipping container—and has been working to help stretch supplies for the OhioHealth system based in Columbus.

Using concentrated hydrogen peroxide vapor, the filters are gassed for two and a half hours to destroy bacteria, viruses and other contaminants, including the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. According to the company, the system can clean the same N95 mask up to 20 times without degrading its performance.

The FDA had first OK’d the use of the system on Saturday but initially limited its use to 10,000 masks per day, according to Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who called on the agency to unlock the system’s full decontamination capacity. DeWine also said this would have limited Battelle’s plans to deploy machines to the hard-hit New York metro area as well as Washington state and Washington, D.C.

Within hours, and after President Donald Trump also urged the FDA to approve the equipment on Twitter, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn tweeted late Sunday evening that the agency had issued an amended authorization.”

Read the full article here: Battelle deploys decontamination system for reusing N95 masks

For hospitals considering a process to decontaminate PPE to allow for multiple uses during the pandemic, they must have a reliable system in place to make sure they get maximum use out of the PPE without exceeding the allowable limits. Mobile Aspects is working with select healthcare systems on a novel tracking system to track PPE including N95 masks to make sure that maximum usage is reached without exceeding published guidelines. Contact us via our website to find out more.

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How Automated Endoscope Drying Cabinets Minimize Bacterial Growth

March 26, 2020Sri Mandava Hospital Management Infection Control Managing Endoscopes Patient Safety Regulatory Compliance

According to a recent study published in the American Journal of Infection Control, storing endoscopes in an automated cabinet with channel drying functionality effectively reduced bacterial growth in the scopes. Because endoscopes are reusable medical instruments, minimizing the amount of bacterial growth in the periods between procedures can dramatically improve patient safety.

The study, performed by researchers at the David B. Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Northside Hospital in Atlanta, compared the drying effectiveness of automated cabinets with channel drying capability to standard endoscope storage cabinets. A recent article by Alex Young at Healio detailed the results:

“To test drying times, researchers took reprocessed bronchoscopes, colonoscopes and duodenoscopes and stored them in either an automated drying cabinet or a standard cabinet. They assessed dryness at 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours and 24 hours using cobalt chloride paper.

After 24 hours in the standard cabinet, external surfaces were dry, but the internal channels still contained residual moisture. In the automated drying cabinets, external surfaces were dry at 3 hours and internal channels of the scopes were dry at 1 hour.

“Which makes sense,” [V. Raman Muthusamy, MD] said. “They’re hooked up, and air is getting blown directly through.”

To assess bacterial growth, researchers inoculated scopes after reprocessing with Pseudomonas aeruginosa and compared rates of microbial growth at 0, 3, 12, 24 and 48 hours.

In the standard cabinet, investigators found an average rate of colony forming unit growth of 8.1 × 10⁶ per hour for bronchoscopes, 8.3 × 10⁶ per hour for colonoscopes, and 7 × 10⁷ per hour for duodenoscopes. In the automated drying cabinet, average colony forming unit growth rate was -28.4 per hour (P=.02), -38.5 per hour (P=.01), and -200.2 per hour (P=.02) in each type of scope, respectively.

“There was a pretty profound reduction in the bacterial growth rate when you used automated drying,” Muthusamy said. “The moisture definitely helps with bacterial growth. There will be some growth, but it’s quite low even at a period of several days compared to what you would see with no drying.”

Read the full article here: Automated endoscope drying cabinets reduce bacterial growth

As Dr. Muthusamy revealed through the study, automated endoscope drying cabinets significantly reduce the risk of passing deadly bacteria between patients by reducing dangerous moisture build-up to minimal amounts. One system that can bring these benefits to hospitals is iRIScope 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 reprocessed. The system includes smart storage cabinets that allow scopes to hang vertically with forced air running through the channels. With iRIScope, sterile technicians will also 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’s time to re-disinfect a scope based on hospital protocols.

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How One Hospital Reduced Their Scope Reprocessing Times By Over 35 Percent

March 20, 2020Vance Huggins Cost Reduction Hospital Finance Hospital Management Managing Endoscopes Operational Efficiency

Today’s Sterile Processing Department (SPD) managers function as business operators whose primary objective is to adhere to the highest standards of cleaning protocols. Their role is to focus not only on adherence to disinfection standards and requirements, but to operate with high speed and efficiency as well. Specific to endoscopic procedures, a critical requirement for SPD managers is making sure scopes are available when needed. Lack of scope availability can create tension between SPD managers and clinicians, making a well-planned and properly staffed SPD department critical.

Recently, Mobile Aspects worked with a major academic health system on the West Coast of the United States. In 2019, the hospital built out a new Endoscopy suite that included 6 procedure rooms and a scope reprocessing facility spread across different floors of a new outpatient procedure building. As a provider of robust data analytics, Mobile Aspects worked with the customer to evaluate the efficiency of the new area’s scope reprocessing workflow. During a recent quarterly business review, the customer and Mobile Aspects agreed that there were identifiable opportunities to improve the flow of endoscopes within the department.

There are several key factors that determine how quickly scopes are reprocessed inside the endoscope usage lifecycle. Looking closely at the scope reprocessing workflow within the new department, Mobile Aspects and the customer determined that scopes were quickly sent up to SPD to begin reprocessing post-procedure. It typically took only 15 minutes for a scope to reach the SPD department to begin the high-level disinfection process. However, once scopes were loaded into the automated endoscope reprocessor (AER), the time until a scope was unloaded was approximately 160 minutes. With the washing process typically averaging 30 minutes, it meant scopes were sitting in the washer waiting to be returned to clean storage for over 2 hours on average.

The customer identified the source of the issue as insufficient personnel. Though adding a full-time employee was seen as the obvious solution, this was not immediately possible due to budgetary constraints. The SPD managers then decided to allocate temporary resources throughout the day to tackle this issue. When the data analytics were reviewed just 3 months following the updated workflow, the reprocessing time decreased to an average of 105 minutes.

The iRIScope system from Mobile Aspects was designed to ensure hospitals follow a standardized reprocessing cycle for flexible endoscopes while automatically documenting each step along the way. In doing so, iRIScope gathers numerous data points which allow hospitals to continuously monitor their workflows and make improvements to efficiency and patient safety. Contact us today to see how we can help improve and automate your endoscope reprocessing workflows and bring an environment of continuous improvement to your practice.

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ECRI List of Top Patient Safety Concerns Includes Sterile Processing

March 12, 2020Sri Mandava Hospital Management Infection Control Managing Endoscopes Patient Safety Regulatory Compliance

The ECRI Institute, based in Philadelphia, has just released its annual list of patient safety concerns for 2020. This year’s list includes an entry at number 5 for device cleaning, disinfection and sterilization, echoing prior year concerns about sub-standard disinfection practices for flexible endoscopes and other reusable medical equipment.

ECRI’s list is the result of extensive data accumulated from member hospitals, as well as input from interdisciplinary patient safety experts. The list is voted on by patient safety experts from inside and outside of ECRI, and the list is meant to identify new risks, existing concerns that are changing because of new technology or care delivery models, and persistent issues that need focused attention or pose new opportunities for intervention.

It’s no surprise that sterilization practices came in as number 5 on the list, as reports of safety breaches due to poorly sterilized or disinfected medical equipment continue to occur all around the country. The Executive Brief published by ECRI Institute explains why device disinfection continues to be such a concern:

“In spite of several barriers, sterile processing departments (SPDs) are responsible for cleaning, decontamination, inspection, assembly, packaging, storage, and distribution of instruments, equipment, and supplies—tasks that rely on strict adherence to processes that leave no room for error. Some of these barriers include productivity pressures; lack of access to current manufacturer instructions for use and processing technologies; lack of necessary supplies; communication breakdowns between SPD staff and the departments they support; and a lack of universal training and certification requirements.

Incidents involving improperly reprocessed instruments can potentially result in devastating effects on patients, damage to organizational and provider reputations, citations and fines from regulatory bodies, prompt review by accrediting agencies, and lawsuits. However, “patient safety starts in the sterile processing department,” says Gail Horvath, MSN, RN, CNOR, CRCST, senior patient safety analyst and consultant, ECRI, and “everyone has a role.”

To help mitigate the risk of errors and their consequences, ECRI recommends facilities establish effective workflows that involve SPD and clinical staff input, incorporate quality checks throughout the sterilization process, improve interprofessional relationships, and provide continuing education opportunities for staff. Establishing relationships with instrument manufacturers and accessing resources from organizations such as the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation [AAMI], the American Society for Health Care Engineering [ASHE], and the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses [AORN] can help fine-tune SPD policies and procedures to ensure timely and safe turnaround times, reduce preventable errors and associated costs, and ensure patient safety and satisfaction.”

The article also noted that “Sterile processing failures can lead to surgical site infections, which have a 3% mortality rate and an associated annual cost of $3.3 billion.”

Read the entire Executive Brief here: Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns 2020

As the spotlight on reusable medical equipment such as endoscopes and surgical instruments continues to shine, hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers must continue to be vigilant in enforcing the highest standards for sterilization and high-level disinfection. We must make sure that team members are performing the steps of the sterilization or reprocessing cycle consistently and are documenting their findings along the way. If your department wants to automate the workflow and documentation process of the endoscope reprocessing cycle, consider a software system like iRIScope. Systems like these ensure that your staff are performing consistent, repeatable and documented steps during reprocessing. They also minimize manual efforts to document the process by incorporating advanced data collection technologies like RFID directly in to the workflow.

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Government Continues Scrutiny Of Hospital Accrediting Bodies

March 5, 2020Sri Mandava Hospital Finance Hospital Management Joint Commission The Business of Surgery

The government continues to question the neutrality of The Joint Commission (TJC) and other healthcare accreditation firms that also have consulting arms. In a recent speech Seema Verma, the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), said her organization is continuing to evaluate options to increase oversight of accrediting firms.

CMS has spent over a year taking a closer look at some accreditation firms like the TJC that are being paid to accredit hospitals once every 3 years. These accrediting organizations are simultaneously paid through their consulting arms by those same hospitals to help them pass the accreditation process. The matter of passing an accreditation is an important one, as it determines a hospital’s eligibility to be reimbursed by Medicare and Medicaid, a huge contributor to their bottom-line. As this article by John Commins at HealthLeaders Media notes:

“Verma said that CMS in recent years has found inconsistencies in the way accrediting organizations inspect providers.

“Some even use standards that differ from our own, which is simply not acceptable,” she said.

CMS in December 2018 put out a request for information from accrediting organizations that Verma says was designed to “ascertain the scope of the issue.”

On Tuesday, Verma did not name specific accrediting organizations in her critique, but she called “a spate of serious deficiencies” that included patient harm and deaths at hospitals that had been deemed Medicare compliant “deeply concerning.”

“Receiving CMS’s authorization to inspect and deem healthcare providers compliant with Medicare’s quality standards is nothing short of assuming a sacred public trust responsibility,” she said. “But an increasing amount of evidence indicates that accrediting organizations are not living up to that high bar.”

“Our concerns are not only heightened by the growing trend of accrediting organizations providing fee-based consulting services to the same organizations they accredit; a glaring conflict of interest,” Verma said, adding that CMS does not allow “these kinds of relationships” in other areas, such as Quality Improvement Organizations in Medicare or external reviews in Medicaid.

The Joint Commission, the nation’s largest hospital accrediting organization, has denied any conflict of interest, citing a “long-standing firewall” it has created between its accrediting division and its consulting division, Joint Commission Resources, Inc.”

Read the entire article here: Verma Raps Accrediting Organizations’ ‘Glaring Conflict of Interest’

One possible result of this probe may be that hospital inspection reports will be made public in order to give additional information to consumers regarding their choice of healthcare providers. Is your hospital ready for your inspection reports to be made public? To prepare, hospitals have to make sure that they are following all of their detailed processes all of the time. Any breakdown in your processes would be made public via an inspection report, putting your hospital’s reputation and finances at risk. Consider automation tools that help track the processes that The Joint Commission and other accreditation agencies focus on during their inspections. Systems such as iRIScope and iRISecure have been developed to ensure that processes and protocols are being followed since your managers can’t watch over every step of the way.

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A First Of Its Kind Solution For Tracking, Storing and Charging Vocera Badge Batteries

February 21, 2020Sri Mandava Cost Reduction Hospital Finance Hospital IT Operational Efficiency The Business of Surgery

Many hospitals have implemented the Vocera platform to improve communications and connectivity among staff. The Badges and Smartbadges used with the Vocera platform allow clinical staff, who are typically busy rounding on patient floors and not tethered to a desk, to stay connected to their colleagues and discuss important items via calls or messages.

One pain point of users of the Vocera system has been the battery life and the need to monitor the batteries that need to be charged or swapped out daily. Because of the small footprint and lightweight nature of the batteries, many staff members often misplace or lose the batteries. This leads to some hospitals ordering hundreds or even thousands of extra batteries per year just to keep up with demand.

One major academic hospital in the Northeast uses Vocera in their busy operating rooms and orders hundreds of badge batteries per year to replace lost ones. This cost, and the constant frustration of employees in search of new batteries, has led them to implement a battery charging and tracking station that uses RFID technology.

This system, developed by Mobile Aspects, allows hospitals to effectively track the chain of custody of Vocera badge batteries while providing a convenient charging station for employees. The system uses RFID-enabled cabinets that automatically detect when batteries are loaded or removed from the cabinets. Employees can only access the batteries after logging in to the cabinet using their badge, so all batteries they remove are associated with them. This allows hospitals to monitor which employees are misplacing the most batteries for accountability purposes. The cabinets are also outfitted with battery chargers so the batteries can recharge while being stored.

The hospital deployed the first-of-its-kind system with the hopes of reducing or eliminating its $60,000 annual spend on replacement batteries. Employees will also benefit from having a convenient, central location to charge their batteries and swap them out when needed. For more information visit www.mobileaspects.com

How One Hospital Optimized Their Staffing Levels Using Scope Tracking Software

February 13, 2020Sri Mandava Hospital Finance Hospital Management Managing Endoscopes Operational Efficiency

Many hospitals find it difficult to optimize staffing levels for their operations. This can be due to any number of variables that become even more extreme as the size of a hospital increases – an influx of patients can throw off carefully planned schedules; certain cases extend way past their estimated closing times; and missing staff or equipment can delay case starts. With so many variables, hospitals must constantly measure and improve their efficiency in order to maximize revenues.

Sterile Processing and Endoscopy departments have a particular challenge in ensuring flexible endoscopes are used and then reprocessed in an efficient manner. With certain endoscopes being requested for use multiple times a day, and with high-level disinfection cycles taking two or more hours to complete, staff in many hospitals face a serious challenge in preparing endoscopes for their next case. Many hospitals resort to costly tactics in order to ensure they have scopes available when they need them, such as buying extra scopes or overstaffing during certain times of the day.

Instead, one large academic medical center used data from their iRIScope endoscope tracking software to optimize their operations and improve scope reprocessing times. When they first started using the software to measure their reprocessing cycle times, they found that it took over 3 hours to reprocess the average endoscope and have it ready for its next use. By looking closer at the data in iRIScope, they were able to identify bottlenecks in reprocessing and assess where they could make the biggest improvements.

One of the hospital’s key findings was that during certain busy parts of the day when the most scopes were coming in for reprocessing, they were understaffed compared to other parts of the day when less endoscopes were coming in for reprocessing. They used that data to shift a few staff members’ schedules to make sure they were properly staffed for the busiest times. Based on these staffing changes and a couple other adjustments made after looking at the data, they reduced their average endoscope reprocessing time from just over 3 hours to just under 2 hours.

Scope tracking systems such as iRIScope from Mobile Aspects have been introduced in the last several years to automate the documentation of the entire endoscope usage lifecycle. These systems automatically record all of the usage and reprocessing activity associated with each flexible endoscope to create an all-electronic audit trail. As discussed above, this audit trail provides numerous benefits to your Endoscopy practice in the areas of operational efficiency. For busy Endoscopy departments and Operating Rooms that can go through dozens of endoscopes per day, having a software system that can keep an eye on scope efficiency and safety can be a huge benefit to department administrators.

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