Inventory management is a popular topic in health care, especially when it comes to the operating room. Operating rooms are facing significant pressure to reduce costs, increase revenue and provide the best in patient care. Challenges such as improving workflow efficiency, optimizing inventory and having access to real-time data are essential to achieving those goals. But it has not been easy.
The July 16 OR Today webinar “Successful Inventory Management in the OR: Taking it from a possibility to a reality” sponsored by Cardinal Health broke records.
Marvella Thomas, RN, MSN, the Senior Clinical Manager at Cardinal Health had 230 people register for her webinar and a total of 93 attended the Thursday afternoon session. Thomas is an expert on the topic and shared her knowledge with attendees.
She has more than 17 years of experience in clinical management with a bachelor’s of science and a master’s of science in nursing from the University of Missouri in Kansas City.
Thomas discussed new technology that is enabling operating rooms to integrate inventory management in a single department or across an entire IDN. The result is true visibility and control to easily manage supplies from low cost to high value from the point of manufacture to the point of use.
During the webinar, Thomas addressed key areas and offered various tips, including how inventory management can aid in increased visibility to product usage and charge capture, while improving clinical workflows and patient safety.
She also illustrated how to identify significant savings opportunity through product utilization and how to increase revenue through patient charge capture.
Webinar attendees learned how to decrease variation through product standardization and how to reduce time spent by nurses on inventory management through Lean Six Sigma practices. Tapan Shah, a director of marketing and product management at Cardinal Health, joined her during the presentation.
Another highlight of the webinar was an informative Q&A session in which Thomas fielded questions and shared her expert insights.
Attendees gave the webinar a 3.9 rating on a five-point scale in their post-webinar survey. Several attendees complimented Thomas’ presentation.
“I really enjoyed today’s webinar. It gave me more data to take to my director in the hopes of getting our inventory under control,” Christy B. wrote in her survey.
“The webinar was very beneficial from the standpoint of the OR room inventory management and also the Q&A brought up questions that never crossed my mind working in an warehouse facility,” Anh L. said.
The 2015 OR Today webinar series is growing more popular with each session. Almost 1,000 people have registered to attend webinars thus far this year.
For a recording of the webinar and a schedule of upcoming webinars visit ortoday-staging.nfbgp4gs-liquidwebsites.com/webinars.
