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The Materials Management department at St. Anthony's Health Care, a 395-bed acute care hospital in St. Petersburg, FL, that is part of the BayCare Health System of not-for-profit hospitals, reviewed its automated inventory system in January 2003 with the goal of identifying areas for improvement. Since then it has expanded its use of the system.

Five years ago, St. Anthony's turned to PAR Excellence Systems, a Cincinnati-based manufacturer, to automate the hospital's inventory system. PAR Excellence provides a complete line of products that use a point-of-use data collection system to automatically track supplies and charges to patient accounts. The system supports bar-coding or "iButton" technology. St. Anthony's uses the iButton technology which uses a hand-held, battery-powered probe that can sense an "iButton" used to store supply-chain information. When the probe touches the button, the information is transferred to the probe. When the probe is placed in its storage cradle, that information is downloaded to the hospital's computers in a process that eliminates keyboard entry.

In its review of the system, the Materials Management department began by assessing the storage rooms of different floors and hospital units and studying inventory reports to determine which supplies were being used the most. The department also asked the nursing staff and other departments for their input on how to improve the process. The department immediately found ways to further streamline the process. For example, the department removed the bulky sliding shelves in the supply room for the Intensive Care Unit. Those shelves were replaced with a wall hanging, panel and plastic bin system that give nurses a better view of the supply room. Those improvements freed up enough space to add about 50 different items to the supply room. The department also made sure that storage bins were used to capacity. Doing that eliminated the number of weekly trips to refill those bins. "We reduced the amount of labor it took to replenish the inventory," said Victor Celiberti, St. Anthony's director of materials management.

# posted by Medical Information : 3:00 AM