Doing the Wave: Inventory Management with RFID

UMass Memorial Medical Center, located in Worcester, MA, has one of the largest cardiac cath labs in New England, performing over 2,500 interventional procedures a year while carrying an inventory valuation of $2M on any given day. Despite the lab’s reputation for being extremely diligent in managing the growing inventory for their busy 7-room cardiac cath lab, the old approach was a manual process which was time-consuming and error-prone. The cardiovascular leadership team was determined to find an automated solution to managing the flow of high-cost cardiac supplies such as stents and balloons. As an early adopter of RFID technology, UMass was interested in discovering whether RFID could provide real-time tracking of supplies in the specialty labs. In particular, the cardiac catheterization lab wanted to see if a system existed that would address their inventory management needs, fit into their already strapped budget, and lastly, preserve the current work flow of nurses and technologists. The Solution UMass Memorial Medical Center chose WaveMark Inc.’s RFID-based inventory management solution for tracking critical medical supplies. To better ensure availability and control costs of physician preference items, the initial installation of WaveMark CIMS was in the 5 cardiac cath labs, as well as the department’s storeroom. Soon thereafter, WaveMark CIMS was also deployed in the 2 electrophysiology rooms and the 2-room interventional radiology lab. A total of over 3,000 items with values up to $30,000 each are now being continuously monitored by WaveMark CIMS. How It Works WaveMark CIMS is a web-based solution providing real-time visibility of inventory. To collect and make this information available, WaveMark installs RFID-enabled cabinets in the hospital to store and track products. Each product box is tagged with a passive 13.56 MHz RFID tag that serves as a license plate to that individual product. The intelligent cabinets have built-in RFID antennas that read tagged items on the shelves every 18 minutes and feed the data to the WaveMark database. When products are used in a procedure, they are waved in front of Point-of-Service (POS) readers that confirm usage and simultaneously feed into the cardiac cath lab’s hemodynamic system. This means staff no longer needs to barcode or use pull-down menus to capture usage of these items. The data is collected on a continuous basis, providing near-real time information accessible from a web browser. WaveMark provides a turnkey inventory system, which means UMass did not have to figure out which RFID readers, tags, or middleware to buy. With no disruption to productivity, WaveMark’s installation team brought in the cabinets, tagged the existing on-hand products, qualified the database and trained the staff. WaveMark CIMS is a web-based solution with a monthly service fee, so there was no capital expense. Maintenance and upgrades are the responsibility of WaveMark. Operational Efficiencies Now that the labs are equipped with automated inventory tracking, hospital staff has complete visibility as to what is on the shelf, what was used in a case and what is missing. It gives me control, says Raul Navarro, inventory manager at UMass. I tracked inventory pretty closely before, but there were always a few products that were unaccounted for. With WaveMark CIMS I know exactly what I have, how much and when I need to reorder, and I immediately know if something is missing. The ease with which RFID tracks inventory and usage has provided UMass with operational efficiencies. While the WaveMark cabinets continuously monitor the status of each individual item that was received, the POS reader at the point of care captures use for a particular case, while decrementing it from inventory. Charge capture of billable supplies has improved and the accuracy of clinical documentation has increased. UMass can make informed decisions about achieving optimal inventory levels and product mix, reducing wasted product, optimizing bulk buy orders, and streamlining cumbersome manual processes. Early Results Although it’s still early in the implementation, Navarro has already decreased high-value product par levels by 9% (179 products) and is bringing down actual on-hand amounts as they are used up. Nurses and techs have waved over 1,800 items into MacLab, remarking on its ease of capturing critical data for more accurate billing. Order accuracy is considerably higher now with the RFID-enabled requisition tracking capability, thereby reducing returns processing. While it is still premature to put an exact dollar figure on savings and revenue, WaveMark CIMS seems to be providing the financial benefits the cardiovascular team was looking for. Conclusions UMass Memorial Medical Center has found the key value of the WaveMark CIMS to be the accuracy and availability of information. It’s clear that operational and financial gains will be greater when the improvement opportunities are based on highly accurate data. Being able to quickly discern usage and product turns has allowed UMass to make decisions on optimal inventory levels. Ultimately, real-time information helps even the best-run labs to achieve a greater level of efficiency. The hands-free nature of the technology would also be beneficial to smaller labs with limited staff and inventory expertise. Kathryn Green is Sr. Director, Radiology Services and Cardiovas-cular Diagnostic & Interventional Services at UMass Memorial Medical Center. She is responsible for all clinical and administrative aspects of the cardiac cath lab, electrophysiology and interventional radiology labs across two hospital campuses. She has been in hospital administration for 17 years and gained her business acumen during her previous career as a stockbroker. She is a leader on a number of association boards including the American Heart Association and several corporate hospital advisory boards. Kathryn can be contacted at greenk01@ummhc.org.

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