Cardinal Health recently introduced new tools to help hospital and independent laboratories simplify inventory management and better control and track spending on supplies so they can improve overall cost effectiveness and free up staff time to focus on patient needs.
Cardinal Health introduces flexible inventory management system to simplify supply ordering for laboratories
Cardinal Health recently introduced new tools to help hospital and independent laboratories simplify inventory management and better control and track spending on supplies so they can improve overall cost effectiveness and free up staff time to focus on patient needs.
The company’s Connect System is a comprehensive inventory management solution that uses custom product bar codes and scanners to significantly reduce the time labs spend ordering supplies. The system helps labs create a consistent ordering process for all products while ensuring immediate access to the right products at the right time. It also helps labs better control supply expenses by reducing unnecessary inventory and by allowing them to track supply spend by department and test platform.
Olive Miranda, clinical laboratory manager at Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch, Calif said, Cardinal Health’s Connect System has helped us significantly improve staff efficiency and product availability. Because the ordering process is so much quicker and more efficient, it’s also helped us save money by nearly eliminating the need for rush orders, greatly reducing our excess inventory and saving significant staff time.
In addition to servicing more than one third of all hospitals in the United States, Cardinal Health also provides medical supplies to more than 6,800 hospital and independent labs. While many of these labs place orders electronically through purchasing systems, many still do so manually. Both of these current ordering processes take up valuable staff time that could be spent on diagnostic testing; because in both cases, staff need to key in each specific order and keep track of what products need to be ordered. Manual product tracking and ordering can also lead to excess inventory, poor storage space utilization, product stock-outs and unnecessary waste due to products needing to be discarded because they’ve exceeded their expiration dates.