Materials management in health care最新文献

Before hospitals embrace new technologies, it's important that medical personnel agree on how best to use them. Likewise, hospitals must provide the support to operate these sophisticated devices safely. With this in mind, it's wise for hospitals to include medical device training in the procurement process. Moreover, purchasing professionals can play a key role in helping to increase the amount of user training for medical devices and systems. What steps should you take to help ensure that new medical devices are implemented safely? Here are some tips.

Today, supply chain metrics should be more strategic rather than transactional in nature. They should provide a for greater understanding of the relationship between supply chain manage ment, clinical outcomes and patient safety. In addition to taking a comprehensive look at inventory value, materials managers should assess strategies to reduce theft and consider third-party logistics managers where appropriate. This article provides direction for best practices in inventory management and suggests supply chain metrics that can be employed to improve performance.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided $1.1 billion to help fund comparative effectiveness research. Some of this money will be used to fund studies that will examine the effectiveness between drugs, medical devices and/or procedures for the same condition. The findings from this research may eventually provide materials managers with information on how products such as knee, hip and spinal implants perform. What follows is a look at the comparative effectiveness movement and what it may mean to the health care supply chain.

The amount of time nurses spend providing direct patient care seems to be continually eroding. So it's little wonder a survey conducted last year of critical care, OR nurses and nurse executives found that half of the 1600 respondents feel they spend too much time on supply chain duties. Most also said their supply chain duties impact patient safe ty and their ability to provide bedside care. Experts interviewed for this report believe it's time for supply chain leaders and nurses to develop a closer working partnership. Included are their recommendations to improve performance.

Developing a disaster preparedness program is just the start of being able to properly respond to supply chain emergency situations. The best plans evolve based on lessons learned during an actual event. The four-level program implemented at Aurora Health Care in Milwaukee shows how improved results can be achieved by focusing on communications. Their work before the second wave of the H1N1 influenza outbreak helped the organization avoid some of the product shortages and capacity strains so many other hospitals and health systems experienced.

Over the past several years, the nearly $2 billion post-surgical woundcare market has been inundated with devices designed to accelerate healing and prevent infection. For materials managers, wound care nurses and others involved in product selection, keeping up with the changes can be a challenge. Here wound care experts, manufacturers and other sources highlight some of the many recent product advances and their applications. In addition, sources comment on the field of regenerative medicine and where it may be headed.