Success Stories

The University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics (UW) is a 471-bed facility recognized as a national leader in cancer treatment, pediatrics, ophthalmology, surgical specialties and organ transplantation. With more than 800 active medical staff and more than 80 outpatient clinics UW offers six intensive care units with 74 beds and seven satellite locations. UW is one of only two Wisconsin-based organizations with designated Level one adult and pediatric trauma centers.

 

Owens & Minor customer, The University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, had a longstanding supply chain challenge in its interventional radiology department, which handles 9,000 procedures annually in seven procedure rooms.

Manual processes, supplemented by Excel spreadsheets of product inventory, failed to accurately match product purchasing to utilization, resulting in overstocks, $60,000-plus in product expirations every six months, an inability to find product and clinician frustration.

Technologists were spending valuable time purchasing product, but lacked a unified process and system, and typically over-ordered to have safety stock. Supply costs were unnecessarily consuming 80 percent of the health system’s annual budget.

The health system selected O&M’s Clinical Supply Solutions^SM (CSS) service to manage inventory, orders, contract compliance, utilization, and enhance revenue. Powered by a proprietary, Internet-based technology, CSS offers dedicated analytical support for in-depth data analysis and ongoing cost-saving recommendations.

 

• Immediately reduced on-hand inventory by 25 percent
• Consolidated supply storage from multiple room locations to a central area, basing par levels on actual utilization patterns
• Provided UW’s cath lab visibility into IR inventory to promote potential inventory sharing
• Strengthened physician-technologist-department management relationships by improving clinical supply chain performance and prompting open dialogue about balancing physician preference with standardization opportunities
• Refocused technologists on patient care versus supply management; placed one tech assistant in charge of supply ordering, receipt and stocking

Click on the link to read the entire story in the “Cath Lab Digest” (July 2008) article .