September 17, 2024- After labor costs, hospital supplies are the second largest hospital expenditure, and management of such product inventory is complex. When Northwestern Medicine experienced significant challenges managing its hospital supply inventory, the team implemented a comprehensive quality improvement initiative and turned to Cardinal Health WaveMark™ Solutions for help. The large hospital system adopted WaveMark™ clinical supply chain technology to track and report use, non-use and location of supplies – all aimed to reduce operating/procedural room waste, inefficiencies, staff frustration and potential risk to quality of care.
Upon implementing and optimizing the WaveMark™ solution across 37 surgical and procedural departments within 11 hospitals, Northwestern saw major improvement across its supply chain. The system improved product expiration by 78% and supply waste by 50% with an 11% reduction in owned inventory.