Inventory management is a critical challenge in hospital and other healthcare environments: the more equipment needed, the more costs and logistical inefficiencies involved. By reducing reprocessing times, UV-C disinfection enables faster and more efficient equipment turnaround, thus opening the way to reducing inventory and doing more with less.
The problems with high hospital inventory
Hospitals require a vast range of equipment which must be fully operational and disinfected before each use. Simply put, the more inventory, the more costs are involved – in purchasing the equipment in the first place, then in storing and maintaining it, and throughout in management and administration.
High inventory means that significant financial resources are tied up in equipment that may be unused for considerable periods. Nevertheless, the equipment must be securely stored, in itself requiring organisation, taking up space in the building that could otherwise be put to better use.
Larger inventories inevitably involve higher maintenance, cleaning and repair costs. Furthermore, traditional, less efficient reprocessing methods result in delays before a piece of equipment can be used again. This means the hospital must stock more devices than necessary, just to ensure that enough are available on a daily basis to meet operational needs – underlining the critical importance of inventory management in hospitals.
How Reprocessing Can Create Inventory Challenges
Effective decontamination of medical devices is essential in reducing the risk of cross-infection.
Thorough physical cleaning, to remove any dirt or organic matter, is always the essential first step in any decontamination process and is a vital prerequisite before disinfection and sterilisation of medium and high-risk instruments.
Once clean, methods for subsequent disinfection of medical devices, to destroy any microbes, including bacteria and viruses, traditionally involve further manual processes, such as the use of wipes or a disinfectant solution diluted with water.
Here it is essential that the correct ratios of disinfectant to water are used every time for the solution to work effectively. If a weaker solution is used, the micro-organisms will not be killed; too strong, and equipment or surfaces can be damaged.
Equally, over time, harsh chemicals can damage or degrade delicate equipment, such as the TEE probes used in cardiology. Additionally, manual methods may not consistently reach all surfaces and, further, such manual processes tie up valued personnel in repetitive, time-consuming procedures. This can lead to bottlenecks in the processing of medical devices – requiring the purchase of additional equipment to avoid operational delays.
Reducing reprocessing time with UV-C technology
By contrast, UV-C technology provides a fast, reliable, chemical-free disinfection cycle that is more effective than traditional methods and delivers significantly faster reprocessing times.
For example, the UV Smart D60 provides medically certified UV-C disinfection against a broad spectrum of disease-causing microbes, including spores, in just 60 seconds. This ensures that the medical device is ready to use again with minimum delay to meet the fast-paced, demanding requirements of today’s hospitals.
Faster turnaround times mean fewer devices are needed, in turn allowing hospitals to reduce inventory and thus reduce the associated costs of extra management and extra storage space.
The automated and traceable UV Smart systems ensure consistent, validated and traceable results with every use, without the need for chemicals, water or reliance on manual mixing procedures.
By reducing the use of strong chemicals, UV-C disinfection is safer for patients, staff and equipment, and minimizes health risks and the potential damage to delicate equipment associated with toxic disinfectants.
Sustainability Benefits for Hospital Inventory Management
Switching to disinfection with UV-C reduces costs by enabling faster disinfection turnaround times for equipment so devices are ready for re-use sooner. This increases efficiency and reduces any need to purchase and maintain excess devices.
Fewer devices required means fewer devices taking up valuable storage space and simpler inventory management. In addition, this provides a more sustainable solution to disinfection, reducing waste and consumption of resources, and avoiding the extra wasted time associated with managing surplus inventory. Instead, more resources can be focused on patient care.
UV-C in Action: Real-World Example
UV-C disinfection systems are in use in hospitals across the globe, reducing inventory by delivering a simpler, faster and more effective means of disinfecting hospital equipment.
This short video shows how the UV Smart D60 is being used in the ENT and cardiology departments at Torrevieja Hospital in Spain, to disinfect endoscopes, TEE probes and similar devices. The D60 uses UV light in the 240-280 nm wavelength range, ensuring complete disinfection of complex medical equipment in just 60 seconds.
Carmen Garcia, ENT Nurse at the hospital, comments that the D60 produces better results because the lenses of the endoscopes no longer fog up, at 60 seconds the disinfection process is much faster and, while the disinfection cycle is in process, “we can continue with our tasks, not just standing there disinfecting with wipes.”
Optimising Hospital Inventory Management
Traditional, manual disinfection processes, such as the use of chlorinated wipes or mixing and applying liquid disinfectants, take up a lot of valuable staff time. In addition, such manual processes are vulnerable to error, and thus inconsistent disinfection, and lack traceability. Furthermore, traditional methods can deliver sub-par results, such as lens fogging, thereby impairing the performance of the medical equipment.
In contrast, UV Smart disinfection systems offer a consistent disinfection process, and include digitized tracking and documentation tools that allow the automation of disinfection procedures.
Furthermore, by reducing the time required for reprocessing and by eliminating the inefficiencies of traditional methods, UV-C avoids all the storage and management costs associated with surplus inventory, and unlocks critical savings in the form of reduced inventory and better use of staff time.
By adopting certified UV-C disinfection products for crucial medical equipment, hospitals and healthcare facilities can improve infection control standards and patient safety, as well as unlocking critical savings through optimum use of hospital inventory.
Find out more about how you can achieve the efficiency, cost savings and greater sustainability of medical equipment disinfection with UV Smart’s essential UV-C systems: click here to contact us now.
References
WHO: Decontamination and reprocessing of medical devices for health-care facilities
https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/364587/WHO-UHL-IHS-IPC-2022.4-eng.pdf
Trowan. C. (2021). UV based disinfection technology: Why an industry standard must be set. https://www.healtheuropa.eu/uvc-disinfection-technology-why-an-industry-standard-must-be-set/109678/
Hear from your peers: UV Smart D60 (Spain) https://youtu.be/ZoN_SzF7K6w?si=pbQyLi7P9wsk5H2I
Clinical evidence on UV Smart D60: available on request from info@uvsmart.nl
Sustainability: https://news.yale.edu/2019/08/02/healthcare-industry-major-source-harmful-emissions
Analysis of bacterial contamination and the effectiveness of UV light-based reprocessing of everyday medical devices. PMID: 36350807; PMCID: PMC9645592. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9645592/
Johnson, J., Proctor, M., Bluth, E., Smetherman, D., Baumgarten, K., Troxclair, L., and Bienvenu, M. 2013, Evaluation of a Hydrogen Peroxide-Based System for High-Level Disinfection of Vaginal Ultrasound Probes, J. Ultrasound Med. 32(10): 1799–1804.
Talan, D.A. and Partida, C.N. 2011, Emergency Department Ultrasound Infection Control: Do Unto (and Into) Others; Annals Emerg. Med. 58(1), 64–66.
Shokoohi, H., Armstrong, P., and Tansek, R. 2015, Emergency department ultrasound probe infection control: challenges and solutions, Open Access Emerg. Med. 7: 1–9.
Häggström, M., Spira, J., and Edelstam, G. 2014, Transducer Hygiene: Comparison of Procedures for Decontamination of Ultrasound Transducers and Their Use in Clinical Practice, J. Clin. Ultrasound, 43(2):81–88.
.jpeg)
.png)
.jpg)
