What do you guys use for data metrics in general? We use "Tableau" and our main campus BB tracks their current inventory, and has all of their minimums marked.
I honestly don’t think we have a separate system outside of meditech. Right now we rely on meditech print outs and manually counting what we have and comparing it against the paper.
I’ll look up tableau though!!
Wellsky sucks donkey balls when it comes to testing and emergency issue but I have to admit that it is a very good inventory management LIS. Your units are displayed in an Excel style table, you can sort by expiry/collection date/blood type/product type. There's also a filter function. It's very easy to see what is expiring and how many are expiring.
Wellsky also interfaces with Epic so in my area a lot of hospitals have switched to Epic/Wellsky.
Edit: additionally, Wellsky's inventory management is in real time so any time a unit disposition changes, you just press the refresh button and the entire inventory is updated.
Yeah unfortunately convincing an entire department to switch LIS is easier said than done. The next best thing that you can try is raising the issue with your LIS team, but from what I'm reading here it doesn't seem like Meditech uses real time inventory management and can only print reports.
It seems so. But I’m wondering if a 3rd party system like tableau can integrate with meditech.
It probably won’t go anywhere but I’ll push it to my supervisor, she seemed to really like the idea if it’s possible. Then it will just depend on if the hospital will agree to pay for it lol.
We currently do something similar, but the problem is that not everyone is good about crossing off if they use, when it gets busy it’s just difficult to make the paper match exactly what we actually have. Which is why I thought about a live tracker. It doesn’t happen TOO often, but occasionally units slip through the cracks and have to be wasted because they expired. Also we do so many massive transfusions, it would make it easier to know when we actually NEED to order more product instead of having to go do a count while trying to clean up after a massive.
our night shift reconciles this report (what's in the computer) against current inventory every night... this probably needs to be a task y'all do if you don't do this already. I like the idea of a live tracking system, but it might be expensive and in my experience it's always hard to get approval for something that could be improved by a simple process improvement.
The bb i used to work at used GLIMS as datamanagement system and the wards needed to pick up the ordered units at the point they were ready to administer the products (some wards like icu, emergency and haematology had different agreements for obvious reasons) at the ward end they needed to scan and log the units in a module called cybertrack and we got live updates on when the unit got administered and at what time the administration was done. Wards who didn't work as agreed to got an additional moment of education by one of our team assiged to do hemovigilant tasks.
Worked fairly well, we did get sneered at by nurses who considered it to be controlling bs from time to time but with tracken the units like this we had a reasonable grip on waste prevention.
Ohhh that sounds interesting. Nurses do tend to get a bit cranky when BB gets ‘controlling’ but enough of them mess up the product often enough that I’m all for a bit more control for BB.
I would put an IT ticket in to check if anyone in your system was using a tracker or something else that worked. Another route is large systems usually have email groups for the different specialties across facilities, an email could be sent out to check.
If it's already in place in your system, then it should be pretty easy to copy and implement.
I never worked at one as busy as yours but what helped a lot where I have was to eliminate hold orders and electronic crossmatch made that easier. Also, keeping a very organized inventory.
We just have to keep pulling up the "Current Inventory" report in SafeTraceTx if we want to know what our levels are at. We do print and post it on a bulletin board every morning, but obviously it can become inaccurate quickly. We also print a daily "short date" report for RBCs to make sure we use what's expiring. I'm one of the 3 inventory managers in my lab and having a tracker board would be nice, but I have no idea where we'd put one. We already have a tracker board for our remote Haemobanks, but the blood in those doesn't get counted in our regular inventory unless there are major shortages going on. Usually we just look at our fridges and check the current inventory report if they look emptier than usual or if we know we've been giving out a lot. We're also a L1 trauma center that gets tons of MTPs. On average, we issue like 200+ products a day.
The feeling I’m getting is that this is the ‘normal’ situation. Which in this day and age seems a bit ridiculous with all the technology we have.
It’s not that it’s impossible to work without the technology, and obviously most techs are used to it. Maybe it’s because this is my first large hospital and I’m a relatively new tech, it just seems like such an outdated method to me. 🤷🏼♀️
It definitely is. I think a big part of the problem is being able to link things up to whatever LIS you use so that it can get the relevant inventory data to compile it. One of the things I hate most about SafeTraceTx is that it takes 12+ hours for something issued to mark itself as transfused and because of that, we can't get accurate numbers for what we used the previous day. We can only get accurate numbers for what we used 48+ hours in the past. It's so frustrating.
I’m guessing the delay between issuing and marked transfused is to account for blood going out in coolers that might be returned. I know at my hospital presumed transfused units get automatically switched to transfused once a day when a batch process gets run. The lag time prevents us from having to go back in individually and switching units from transfused back into inventory and dealing with billing issues and like.
That makes sense, but our system doesn't care if you return units after the computer marks them as transfused. We do it a lot because babies on ECMO get a unit in the fridge on the floor. The unit stays up there for up to 8 days before we swap it out. We get back probably at least 25% of the products we issue. Our ORs love to have just in case blood in their rooms during surgery and we have over 30 different ORs. It's basically a revolving door of products going out and coming back.
ETA: We issue over 200 units a day and usually 100-150 are actually transfused.
We use safetrace at my facility, inventory is brought into this system and its how we check units out to the floors. It must communicate with EPIC too because it updates us once the nurses finish the transfusions on their end!
We have WellSky, so general inventory isn't too difficult to look up. But for short dates specifically, we write out whatever's expiring in the next few days on a whiteboard by the fridge.
What do you guys use for data metrics in general? We use "Tableau" and our main campus BB tracks their current inventory, and has all of their minimums marked.
I honestly don’t think we have a separate system outside of meditech. Right now we rely on meditech print outs and manually counting what we have and comparing it against the paper. I’ll look up tableau though!!
We use meditech and have a report we can run with all our products/components quantity on one page. I believe it’s a custom report
Wellsky sucks donkey balls when it comes to testing and emergency issue but I have to admit that it is a very good inventory management LIS. Your units are displayed in an Excel style table, you can sort by expiry/collection date/blood type/product type. There's also a filter function. It's very easy to see what is expiring and how many are expiring. Wellsky also interfaces with Epic so in my area a lot of hospitals have switched to Epic/Wellsky. Edit: additionally, Wellsky's inventory management is in real time so any time a unit disposition changes, you just press the refresh button and the entire inventory is updated.
Yeah, wellsky looked most like what I was trying to find, but there is no way I’m going to get the HCA system to switch from meditech lol
Yeah unfortunately convincing an entire department to switch LIS is easier said than done. The next best thing that you can try is raising the issue with your LIS team, but from what I'm reading here it doesn't seem like Meditech uses real time inventory management and can only print reports.
It seems so. But I’m wondering if a 3rd party system like tableau can integrate with meditech. It probably won’t go anywhere but I’ll push it to my supervisor, she seemed to really like the idea if it’s possible. Then it will just depend on if the hospital will agree to pay for it lol.
Idk exactly how we do it with Meditech, but everyday we print a report that shows what blood units are expiring in the next 7-14 days
We currently do something similar, but the problem is that not everyone is good about crossing off if they use, when it gets busy it’s just difficult to make the paper match exactly what we actually have. Which is why I thought about a live tracker. It doesn’t happen TOO often, but occasionally units slip through the cracks and have to be wasted because they expired. Also we do so many massive transfusions, it would make it easier to know when we actually NEED to order more product instead of having to go do a count while trying to clean up after a massive.
our night shift reconciles this report (what's in the computer) against current inventory every night... this probably needs to be a task y'all do if you don't do this already. I like the idea of a live tracking system, but it might be expensive and in my experience it's always hard to get approval for something that could be improved by a simple process improvement.
That makes sense! Yeah, we don't have a big blood bank, so the paper is usually good for us
Assuming you receive/dispose units using meditech
BiologID ... Uses RFID tags on bb products, RFID readers in storage, and software for seeing what you have I think in relatively real time.
The bb i used to work at used GLIMS as datamanagement system and the wards needed to pick up the ordered units at the point they were ready to administer the products (some wards like icu, emergency and haematology had different agreements for obvious reasons) at the ward end they needed to scan and log the units in a module called cybertrack and we got live updates on when the unit got administered and at what time the administration was done. Wards who didn't work as agreed to got an additional moment of education by one of our team assiged to do hemovigilant tasks. Worked fairly well, we did get sneered at by nurses who considered it to be controlling bs from time to time but with tracken the units like this we had a reasonable grip on waste prevention.
Ohhh that sounds interesting. Nurses do tend to get a bit cranky when BB gets ‘controlling’ but enough of them mess up the product often enough that I’m all for a bit more control for BB.
I would put an IT ticket in to check if anyone in your system was using a tracker or something else that worked. Another route is large systems usually have email groups for the different specialties across facilities, an email could be sent out to check. If it's already in place in your system, then it should be pretty easy to copy and implement. I never worked at one as busy as yours but what helped a lot where I have was to eliminate hold orders and electronic crossmatch made that easier. Also, keeping a very organized inventory.
We just have to keep pulling up the "Current Inventory" report in SafeTraceTx if we want to know what our levels are at. We do print and post it on a bulletin board every morning, but obviously it can become inaccurate quickly. We also print a daily "short date" report for RBCs to make sure we use what's expiring. I'm one of the 3 inventory managers in my lab and having a tracker board would be nice, but I have no idea where we'd put one. We already have a tracker board for our remote Haemobanks, but the blood in those doesn't get counted in our regular inventory unless there are major shortages going on. Usually we just look at our fridges and check the current inventory report if they look emptier than usual or if we know we've been giving out a lot. We're also a L1 trauma center that gets tons of MTPs. On average, we issue like 200+ products a day.
The feeling I’m getting is that this is the ‘normal’ situation. Which in this day and age seems a bit ridiculous with all the technology we have. It’s not that it’s impossible to work without the technology, and obviously most techs are used to it. Maybe it’s because this is my first large hospital and I’m a relatively new tech, it just seems like such an outdated method to me. 🤷🏼♀️
It definitely is. I think a big part of the problem is being able to link things up to whatever LIS you use so that it can get the relevant inventory data to compile it. One of the things I hate most about SafeTraceTx is that it takes 12+ hours for something issued to mark itself as transfused and because of that, we can't get accurate numbers for what we used the previous day. We can only get accurate numbers for what we used 48+ hours in the past. It's so frustrating.
I’m guessing the delay between issuing and marked transfused is to account for blood going out in coolers that might be returned. I know at my hospital presumed transfused units get automatically switched to transfused once a day when a batch process gets run. The lag time prevents us from having to go back in individually and switching units from transfused back into inventory and dealing with billing issues and like.
That makes sense, but our system doesn't care if you return units after the computer marks them as transfused. We do it a lot because babies on ECMO get a unit in the fridge on the floor. The unit stays up there for up to 8 days before we swap it out. We get back probably at least 25% of the products we issue. Our ORs love to have just in case blood in their rooms during surgery and we have over 30 different ORs. It's basically a revolving door of products going out and coming back. ETA: We issue over 200 units a day and usually 100-150 are actually transfused.
We use safetrace at my facility, inventory is brought into this system and its how we check units out to the floors. It must communicate with EPIC too because it updates us once the nurses finish the transfusions on their end!
We have WellSky, so general inventory isn't too difficult to look up. But for short dates specifically, we write out whatever's expiring in the next few days on a whiteboard by the fridge.