Cardinal Health report spotlights solutions to optimize, improve safety in healthcare supply chain

Cardinal Health WaveMark™ Supply Management & Workflow Solutions released a whitepaper outlining how automated solutions can mitigate supply chain operational issues, with a focus on inventory management. Using data from health systems that currently use Wavemark™, the whitepaper provides a look at how the business improved key health system metrics and outcomes. The whitepaper and an infographic highlighting top data are available for download here: https://ww3.cardinalhealth.com/l/104412/2021-07-06/5df9bk.

According to the findings, supply chain costs are at an all-time high with hospitals on average spending $12.1 million annually unnecessarily, including on product inventory that expires before it can be used.

“This is significant – hospitals and health systems are simply spending too much on their supply chain when an automated and clinically integrated workflow solution could mitigate these costs, decrease product wasted and improve patient safety,” said Shawn McBride, vice president and general manager, WaveMark™. “The pandemic especially exposed the need for tech-enabled supply chain innovations, like WaveMark™, that provide better visibility to medical inventory at the point-of-care.”

Inventory management efficiencies are vital to allowing healthcare staff fighting COVID-19 to focus more time on patient care instead of product stocking decisions. Yet, according to the report, many hospitals and health systems are still manually tracking inventory – identified as one of the root causes for a “never event,” in which an expired or recalled product is used on a patient. Approximately 7 to 10 percent of clinical products expire on hospital shelves before being used – and more than 25 percent of hospital staff know of an instance where an expired or recalled product was used on a patient.

“Using a solution like Wavemark™ optimizes product stocking decisions and provides visibility to at-risk inventory which significantly reduces the number of expired products sitting on shelves and, at times, being used on patients,” McBride said. “Our customers use Wavemark™ to track products all the way from manufacturer to the point of patient care and are reporting an average of only 1.5 percent expirations on shelves – an 85-percent improvement over industry average.”

These manual processes can also lead to underbilled patient care. Nearly 90 percent of patient cases are underbilled in some form, leading to more than $1.94 billion of revenue leakage for hospitals each year. In 2020, Wavemark™ tracked nearly 600,000 encounters in operating rooms and interventional suites throughout the U.S. with a near-perfect documentation accuracy of 99.8 percent, identifying an additional 8,500 clinically important, high-value products that weren’t documented at the point of care. This tracking enabled the average hospital to capture $7.7 million in supplies and an additional $65,000 to $212,000 in product charges that would have otherwise been lost.

“The opportunity for hospitals to regain some of this missed revenue is significant, but without supply visibility, you can’t identify problem areas that are costing you money,” McBride said. “A solution like Wavemark™ helps diagnose causes of supply issues and improves utilization and SKU management – all resulting in major cost efficiencies and decreased revenue leakage. It also takes one more layer of distraction off our essential hospital staff so they can focus on what matters most: their patients.”

About WaveMark™ Supply Management & Workflow Solutions
WaveMark™ empowers teams to work together to enable better patient care by connecting healthcare providers and manufacturers to create clinically integrated, digitally automated supply chains. Aligned with industry best practices, WaveMark™ supports an optimized supply chain strategy with service and technology offerings that help support more effective patient care at the lowest operational cost. With WaveMark™, clinicians and supply chain teams gain the freedom to focus on what matters most, which includes enhancing the patient experience, increasing enterprise visibility to supplies, supporting clinical documentation accuracy, and enhancing the overall value of the supply chain.

About Cardinal Health
Cardinal Health is a distributor of pharmaceuticals, a global manufacturer and distributor of medical and laboratory products, and a provider of performance and data solutions for health care facilities. With 50 years in business, operations in more than 40 countries and approximately 48,000 employees globally, Cardinal Health is essential to care. Information about Cardinal Health is available at cardinalhealth.com.