The healthcare business management sector is struggling to keep up with the increasing costs and demands thrown its way every year. Combined with a lack of process, and turnover in support staff, this means that it can be quite hard for medical institutions to comply with regulations, improve returns on investment, and fully optimize workflows.
To tackle these issues, clinics often use medical inventory management software to improve overall structure and efficiency. This can benefit the entire team: doctors, administrative bodies, custodial staff, and even patients.
Here are 4 ways Pulse can alleviate the increasing pressures in managing the healthcare sector.
Implement digital technologies to aid in daily tasks – whether it is communicating with patients, having access to technical information, or asset management.
Imagine compiling a list of tools and equipment needed for each appointment, assigning them to a specific doctor, and preparing reports on utilization or maintenance for each department. With automated inventory management, you can forgo spreadsheets and paper trails. Things can be made even quicker by tagging all inventory items with a unique barcode or QR code. This way, staff can easily scan tools and inventory to maintain a reliable database and improve processing times. All of this enables doctors to speed through operational bottlenecks and focus on what’s really important – their patients.
Medical clinics tend to deal with multiple emergency situations daily, a lot of which require the use of expensive medical equipment and inventory. Some of which have a limited lifespan, and need to be cycled out to be compliant with standards. Due to a constant inflow of patients, clinics should have a robust system in place so that replacements can be procured on time and expired inventory can be set aside and disposed of properly. This is useful both for costly consumables and assets that have to be ordered well in advance and high-volume items that need to be replenished constantly.
Utilizing Pulse will ensure no resources are wasted trying to find replacements at the last minute. Both procuring and utilizing consumables and assets becomes extremely easy with the help of Pulse cloud-based inventory management software, eliminating bottlenecks across the board.
Medical stock has a limited shelf life, after which it needs to be disposed of properly. Some items even need to be kept at certain temperatures, and within specialized storage units, to protect them from damage.
Not having a system in place to track, allocate, and easily identify problem medications encourages bad practices. A medical inventory management system enables staff to monitor inventory from the time of purchase to consumption and sends out alerts when an item is on the brink of expiry. It, therefore, ensures best practices and helps doctors avoid costly malpractice suits related to this.
Clinics are complex institutions, catering to all kinds of patients. This is why they are flooded with numerous types of tools, inventories, and machines with very specific functions, storage instructions, and specifications. Without reliable software to organize these items, things can get lost, broken, or misplaced quite easily. Due to a lack of proper check-in and checkout mechanisms, things can also be misused fairly easily. Such actions can become problematic for doctors and cause blockages in workflows.
To prevent such incidents, standardized medical inventory management allows staff to trace the ownership of all assets to a centralized database. This makes it easier to track and monitor inventory usage as well, lowering the chances of fraudulent activities. With a tight security system in place, doctors can carry out operations as planned without the hassle of misplaced, misused, or lost inventory.
It is clear that Medical institutions need more than just a simple log or spreadsheet to track the usage and custody of medical assets. They already face increased wait times, the misuse of product or equipment, waste in inventory, poor record-keeping, and significant bottlenecks. The time is just right for clinics to invest in a cloud-based inventory management system like Pulse.
Automated inventory management can help healthcare institutions avoid a lot of these challenges relating to costs, productivity, security, and more. This takes a lot of administrative burden off doctors and provides them with the tools they need to improve the quality of care for all their patients.