When we survey hospital pharmacists, many of them indicate that improving the speed and efficiency of managing medications at their facility, along with reducing errors, are their top challenges. In December of last year, Drug Topics addressed the use of RFID for automating hospital medication replenishment to deal with these challenges in an article titled “Hospitals Turn to RFID for Medication Replenishment.” The article discussed Intelliguard® RFID Kit and Tray Management System implementations at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego and Inova Fairfax Medical Campus in Falls Church, VA. We recently completed a quality study with Inova, the results of which are outlined in a new case study and highlight the benefits of RFID for hospitals and health systems dealing with common challenges.
Goals: Replenishing Medication Kits and Trays Efficiently and Accurately
Inova Health System is a Northern Virginia based not-for-profit healthcare system with 5 acute care facilities and 8 ambulatory surgery centers. The team at Inova had a number of goals when evaluating pharmacy medication management solutions for their health system, including:
- Efficiently and accurately replenish medication kits and trays
- Decrease staff time spent on manual tasks
- Improve effectiveness of expiration date monitoring
- Improve identification and prompt removal of recalled medications
- Reduce the risk for human error inherent in manual processes
- Gain visibility to actionable usage data for inventory optimization and cost control
The Inova case study outlines the solution evaluation process and key selection criteria including safety, staff efficiency and cost containment. It also provides an overview of the RFID implementation process, as well as results from a post-implementation quality study that measured tray accuracy as well as speed of replenishment both with and without the Intelliguard® RFID-enabled system.
Results: Integrating RFID Into Daily Operations at Inova Health System
The team at Inova gained many benefits from Intelliguard® RFID pharmacy automation for their kit and tray management processes. Results of the quality study at the Inova Fairfax Medical Campus found:
- 100% accuracy in tray replenishment and enhanced patient safety
- Nearly 8 weeks of productive staff time returned annually
- Item-level visibility leading to better inventory optimization
- “Super easy-to-use” system
>>Download the detailed case study.
About Intelliguard® RFID Healthcare Technology for Kit and Tray Management
The Intelliguard® Kit and Tray Management System uses advanced RFID healthcare technology to automate the process of medication kit and tray replenishment and management. No item-level scanning or manual counting are required. With the ability to read high-density trays, multi-layer tackle boxes and overlapping labels, this revolutionary system can scan more than 150 medications in a matter of seconds to ensure medication kit inventories are always complete and accurate. The Intelliguard® RFID System is proven to save staff time and provides assurance each task is performed with 100% accuracy—nothing missing, nothing expired.
>>Learn more about hospital pharmacy medication management with the Intelliguard® RFID-enabled Kit and Tray Management System
>>Read the full Drug Topics article: Hospitals Turn to RFID for Medication Replenishment
Interested in learning more about how Intelliguard® RFID Solutions can help improve operations at your facility? Contact us or click on the button below to request a demo.
