Glossary
What is ADT?
An admission, discharge, and transfer system (ADT) is used to track patients from the time they are checked in to check-out. This system is also used to store personal patient information like names, medical numbers, and their age.
What is AORN?
The Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses (AORN) is an organization established in 1949 to build a community of operating room nurses with the purpose of defining standards to keep healthcare professionals and surgery patients safe.
What is the difference between APICS and ASCM?
The American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS) changed its name in 2018 to the Association For Supply Chain Management (ASCM).
The Association for Supply Chain Management is the largest non-profit international organization for supply chain professionals and companies built on a foundation of APICS certifications and training tools.
What is bill only?
Bill Only typically refers to those products that are delivered the day of or the day prior to a procedure. These are typically implants such as those used in orthopedic procedures. The hospital doesn’t record these items in their inventory like they do most products. However, the hospital has to generate a purchase requisition and pay the vendor. Thus the term bill only.
What is cloud-based healthcare inventory management?
Cloud-based healthcare inventory management is the monitoring and maintenance of a hospital’s inventory using online inventory management software. These cloud-based applications streamline the inventory management process by providing real-time updates that reduce common mistakes associated with traditional methods of measuring stock levels in hospitals. The main benefits of cloud-based inventory management are:
• The customer doesn’t have to invest in servers and other technology hardware
• Maintenance is handled by the software provider
• The customer is always on the most up-to-date version, which is pushed out automatically
• Security is often less of a concern in cloud-based software
• It's easily scalable, meaning more users/departments can be easily added
What is customer-owned inventory management?
Customer-owned inventory management is the practice of a supply chain management company controlling warehousing, pick, pack, ship, and delivery of inventory that is owned by the customer whether sourced through non-traditional suppliers or traditionally distributed. The customer-owned inventory is stored and managed in distribution centers and replenished directly to the dock, stocking location, or point-of-care.
What is digital tissue management?
Digital Tissue Management tracks the chain of custody for bone and tissue samples using a computer solution, removing the need to keep written logbooks. The solution digitizes the information required by scanning the bar code of the samples and uses advanced workflow automation to track the samples through the chain of custody process. The solution is typically cloud-based, meaning there is no software for a hospital to install on their servers. ϸ QSight is one such solution for digital tissue management.
What are distribution centers?
Distribution centers are storage buildings, such as warehouses, and transportation centers that play an integral role in supply chains. Product fulfillment, storage, and distribution to and from manufacturing facilities and end-users are the primary functions of distribution centers. Distribution centers can be either owned by the manufacturer or by the end-user and are often regionally based.
What is a Diversity Supplier?
A diverse supplier is a business that is at least 51% owned and operated by an individual or group that is part of a traditionally underrepresented or underserved group. This includes small, women-, minority- LGBTQ-, owners with disabilities, and veteran-owned businesses.
What are Electronic Medical Records (EMR)?
Electronic medical records (EMR) are digital medical charts that contain medical information and notes collected by health professionals to diagnose and treat patients.
What is Emergency Preparedness?
Emergency preparedness is the creation and implementation of proactively established action plans and pre-determined, situation-specific orders such as hurricane orders and emergency product storage needs that can be activated in the event of an emergency.
What is end-to-end inventory management?
End-to-end inventory management integrates all aspects of a healthcare supply chain process from the manufacturer to delivery to the end-user. Information from each component in the supply chain is assimilated into actionable data through a shared system that allows for real-time visibility into forecasting, procurement, tracking, and inventory levels.
What Endo-Mechanical supply management?
Endo-mechanical supply chain management is the organization of endo-mechanical devices used during surgeries in the torso region of the body. These devices are mostly used to assist surgeons with laparoscopic surgeries in the abdomen.
What is an enterprise dashboard?
An enterprise dashboard is typically a feature of a software solution that, for the purposes of a hospital, aggregates data from different departments or the same department from different hospitals and presents the data on a single screen. The data can be displayed in raw form but is often displayed visually in the form of a chart. Enterprise dashboards are often customizable, displaying data that the user chooses. There can also be a role-based enterprise dashboard, displaying information relevant to a given role within the hospital, such as Supply Chain Director.
What is enterprise visibility in healthcare?
Enterprise visibility is a tracking system for healthcare organizations that provides real-time information about the location and status of patients, assets, and staff. This system increases coordination between patient needs and healthcare resources which leads to more efficient and comprehensive care.
What is Expanded Access™?
Expanded Access is an ϸ program that gives hospitals and health systems visibility into fragmented purchasing patterns and supplier activity that can be consolidated through ϸ as part of their distribution services, resulting in streamlined processing and lower operational costs. Hospitals that purchase product directly from multiple vendors could be adding cost and complexity, including fragmented purchasing and additional freight and procurement expenses, to their supply chain. By aggregating fragmented, purchasing activity through ϸ, hospitals can save time and money, allowing hospitals to focus more time on patient care. Hospitals provide ϸ a purchasing history file, usually the most recent 3-6 months of purchasing data. The data is reviewed and analyzed to identify opportunities to bring products that are being purchased directly from the vendor through the ϸ channel.
What is a freight forwarder?
Freight forwarders serve as a middleman between shippers and healthcare facilities. They coordinate the transportation of products to their final destination.
What is the hospital supply chain?
A hospital supply chain is a network of activities involved in sourcing, acquiring, managing, and distributing medical supplies and equipment to hospitals and other healthcare facilities.
What are integrated solutions?
Integrated solutions offer healthcare facilities and hospitals a comprehensive approach to solving problems within multiple components or systems.
What is interoperability in healthcare?
Interoperability allows healthcare providers to safely access patient health information from different healthcare systems to make more informed medical decisions.
What is inventory management?
Inventory management is people, processes and technology integrated together to provide the right product in the right number of units at the right place at the right time at the right price.
What is inventory management software?
Inventory management software helps hospitals manage their inventory of medical equipment and materials. This computer software automates tracking of inventory levels to reduce human errors, automatic reordering of products when it drops below a certain threshold, and improves the efficiency of inventory management.
What is inventory visibility?
Inventory visibility refers to the ability to see data or information on your inventory. At its most basic inventory visibility is about seeing inventory counts of individual products. But solutions like ϸ’s QSight, provide deep visibility into a hospital’s inventory by providing data on such things as expiring and expired products when to order products, products on backorder and so much more.
What is Kanban?
Kanban is a two-bin inventory management solution to manage certain product types, such as consumables, in a hospital. It works by placing one bin in front of another on the supply rack. Clinicians remove the product from that front bin and when that is empty, the bin is removed, placed on the top of the rack and the back bin is now pulled forward. The placement of the empty bin on the top shelf is a visual signal to reorder the product. When the replenishment product comes in, that new bin is placed behind the existing bin. Kanban is offered as a QSight module.
What is a labor shortage?
Labor shortage occurs when employers are having a difficult time recruiting qualified applicants for open positions. During a labor shortage, there aren’t enough candidates to fill the open roles, and the few available candidates are hard to find.
What is LUM?
The current meaning of LUM regarding supply chain management is "Logical Unit of Measure". Other commonly referenced terms are "Low Unit of Measure", “Just In Time” (JIT). The new definition better describes the emphasis on Just In Time methodologies to set inventory levels to the correct unit of measure for the specific need. The focus is to find the unit of measurement that provides the most efficient level to support patient care, not necessarily the lowest.
The main objective for LUM is to provide products in the most efficient amount or quantity from a distributor. The orders are picked, packed and delivered by the distributor to the stocking location, end-user department or point-of-care. This allows hospitals and medical centers to spend less time on managing inventory and focus resources on value-added tasks and greatly reduce inventory, saving money and valuable storage space.
What is a Materials Management Information System (MMIS)?
A Material Management Information System is used to compile and integrate information about an organization's inventory throughout the purchasing, storage, delivery, and use of materials. The system tracks the movement, levels, and requirements of inventory items to coordinate all aspects in the process. Alerts when inventory levels reach specific benchmarks and comprehensive reports are components to MMIS.
Advantages to MMIS include improved efficiency with inventory management and purchasing through streamlining processes. In healthcare this usually includes accounting, procurement, and reductions in material delivery time.
What is a medical supply distributor?
A medical supply distributor is a company that provides various healthcare facilities (including hospitals, clinics, etc.) with medical devices, supplies, and equipment needed to deliver patient care.
What is MedTech?
MedTech, short for medical technology, are medical devices that aid health professionals in diagnosing, treating, and managing the health of their patients. Some examples of MedTech include 3D printing, EKG machines, and robotic surgery.
What is operating room efficiency?
Operating room efficiency is the amount of time, effort, and resources needed to perform a surgery in a timely manner. An efficient operating room relies on the proper allocation of staff and resources to seamlessly perform a successful surgical procedure.
What is operating room utilization rate?
Operating room utilization rate is the total amount of time needed to perform a surgery (which also encompasses patient prep, anesthesia induction, and emergence) plus total turnover time divided by the time available.
What does outsourced logistics mean?
Distribution, warehousing and logistics services for manufacturers, including all operational needs such as customer service, order origination, invoicing and accounts receivable, remote inventory management and transportation management.
What is pandemic preparedness?
Pandemic preparedness is the creation and implementation of proactively established action plans and pre-determined, situation-specific orders and pandemic product storage needs such as strategic stockpiles of PPE that can be activated in the event of a pandemic.
What are PAR levels?
Periodic Automatic Replenishment or PAR levels are the minimum and maximum levels quantities hospitals establish for products they hold in inventory. When a product gets close to the minimum level of a product the product should be re-ordered. Maximum PAR levels help prevent over-ordering of product. Many hospitals struggle with establishing PAR levels, often because of a lack of data. And that’s where a solution like QSight comes in. QSight has the data and can use the data to establish the right PAR levels.
What is meant by perioperative?
Perioperative is that period of time before, during, and after a patient’s surgery. However, in many instances, it is referring to the time pre and post-surgery.
What is a perioperative supply chain?
A perioperative supply chain is all the supplies necessary throughout the full surgery timeline and how those supplies get the from manufacturer or distributor to the hospital and ultimately to the patient. This encompasses all of the supplies needed for each stage associated with surgeries; from pre-op to post-op, all the way to the patient being discharged from the hospital.
What is an end-to-end perpetual inventory management system?
An end-to-end perpetual inventory management system is used to record stock levels and automatically log every purchase and sale of stock.
What are physician preference cards?
Physician preference cards are cards maintained by the hospital that list a physician’s preference for supplies and the procedure room environment by procedures. They detail things such as what sutures and implants the doctor prefers and often even detail the temperature of the room or the music they like to listen to during the procedure. Physician preference cards that are inaccurate or not kept up too late can lead to inefficiencies and needless activity, such as picking the wrong products for a case.
What is product standardization?
Product standardization is the process of reviewing the suppliers and products being purchased, that have little or no variation, across the hospital or health system. This clinical and economic analysis consists of utilizing the hospital's purchasing data to identify opportunities to consolidate and standardize the number of suppliers and products being handled across facilities, contracts, UOMs, product classes, and categories. Potentially resulting in optimization of contracts to leverage better-tiered pricing, consolidation of deliveries, reduction of freight costs, optimization of forecasting, streamlined purchasing and logistics processes, as well as more predictable patient outcomes and increased staff efficiency.
What is RFID and how does it work?
RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. RFID is a wireless technology that uses radio waves to classify and track products. In healthcare, RFID technology can streamline inventory management by automating the tracking of inventory levels.
What is a stockpile audit?
A stockpile audit is a physical count of all the items within a hospital or within a certain location of a hospital. It is used to get an accurate count of current stock and streamline planning for future hardships the hospital may face regarding inventory management. Here are a few of the many benefits a stockpile audit can provide:
● Creating an action plan for maintaining optimal inventory levels
● Identifying where stock adjustments are needed
● Removing outdated inventory
● Optimizing space for inventory