What’s inside:
Selecting the best hospital inventory management software is confusing so we’re here to help you out with:
- 8 key features to look out for
- Bonus tips
- Benefits of the right hospital inventory management system
When it comes to ensuring the continual supply of medical inventory, your hospital needs a tool that can keep up with the pace, streamline operations, generate vital business intelligence, and ensure patient safety. It’s a tall order, but that’s where the right hospital inventory management software saves the day.
Hospitals that introduce effective healthcare inventory management software typically see an inventory reduction of 25-30% in the first year and slash wastage by $1-2 million.
Ready to take your hospital to the next level? Check out our checklist of must-have features.
8 Key Features of Effective Hospital Inventory Management Software
A robust hospital inventory management system should offer a comprehensive suite of features and functionality that address the common challenges faced by frontline workers, as well as healthcare leadership.
Let’s run down the list of the 8 most favored features by healthcare teams and management:
- Real-time Visibility: Gaining instant access to accurate inventory levels across multiple locations, feeds into operational workflows that ensure critical supplies are always available when needed.
Bonus Tip: Remember that solutions are needed for all inventory types including medical devices, tissue, bone, implants, pharmacy supplies, and bulk medical supplies.
- Automated Reordering: Streamlining the procurement process with automated replenishment driven by actual demand, ensures a leaner, more balanced inventory that meets changing levels of demand.
Bonus Tip: Using a system that makes PAR-level adjustment recommendations based on historical data keeps your inventory optimized.
- Expiration Date Tracking: Ensure that medical devices and implants are used before their expiration dates to prevent waste and maintain patient safety.
Bonus Tip: At the point of use ensure pre consumption safety alerts prevent the usage of any unsafe items that made it into surgery.
- Integration with EHRs and Supply Chain Systems: Seamlessly connecting with electronic health records, ERP and MMIS systems provides a unified view of inventory.
Bonus Tip: Pick a system that doesn’t just offer transparency across the healthcare facility, but can also provide real-time access to vendors or distributors for full supply chain visibility.
- Utilizing new data capture technology: Leveraging smart hardware twinned with AI software optimizes the data quality and quantity that is fed into hospital systems, which drives operational and administrative workflows.
Bonus Tip: Switching from barcode scanning to AI vision technology in surgical areas immediately turns a data blind spot into a transparent data hub.
- Audit Trails: Maintain a detailed UDI audit trail of inventory transactions and activities for compliance, accountability and patient safety.
Bonus Tip: Having a searchable batch database ensures robust recall management.
- Integrated Product Identification Platform: Relying on hospital item master slows down surgical documentation, better to add a supplementary level of data by integrating a cloud data lake filled with perpetually updated product data that can be referenced for streamlined documentation.
Bonus Tip: The best systems don’t just identify products but also to fix data gaps and errors, using machine learning algorithms.
- Advanced Analytics: Leveraging data-driven insights to optimize stock levels, identify trends, and forecast future demand is the secret to success.
Bonus Tip: Ensure data insights are based on high quality data. Partial data gives a partial picture. Make sure your data collection tools in all stock and consumption area provide complete, correct and clean data.
Not all hospital inventory management software is the same. Ensure you look into the type of technology being used, the different software features, and don’t forget that data collection is the basis of data insights. Making sure smart hardware supports advanced software ensures optimized software performance and impact on healthcare management and delivery.
Benefits of Implementing Hospital Inventory Management Software
The benefits of adopting advanced inventory management software are substantial. Hospitals can expect to:
- Improve Patient Safety: Ensure that critical supplies are always available for both emergency and elective care, reducing the risk of delays in patient care and optimizing outcomes.
- Enhance Operational Efficiency: Streamline inventory processes, reduce manual labor, and free up staff time for patient care. Use fewer resources, take less time, but achieve better results.
- Reduce Costs: Optimize stock levels, minimize waste, and negotiate better pricing with suppliers. Data is the key to understanding what you need, gaining the best prices and being in full control of your inventory.
- Increase Compliance: Ensure adherence to regulatory requirements and maintain a high level of quality standards. Have the capability to demonstration compliance during audits.
- Improve Decision-Making: Leverage data-driven insights to make informed decisions about inventory management strategies. Data is your ears and eyes in the hospital supply chain, ensure you are provided with high quality supply chain data and accurate business intelligence.
Hospital inventory management software is not just an operational tool, it is a business necessity.
Today’s AI-driven inventory management systems have advanced features that deliver high quality data to steer smarter decisions.
Contact us to find out about our advanced AI solutions for smarter healthcare management.
Hospital inventory management systemHospital inventory management software
Hospital inventory management software
Hospital inventory management software
Hospital inventory management system
