Healthcare Matters

Hi Tom –

Great stuff … love your questions on the whole hoarding/hiding issue and I actually learned a new word – disposophobia!

Equipment “hoarding” is indeed a significant problem in hospitals. It’s not hoarding like you might perceive from reality TV shows – but its real none-the-less. Equipment hoarding (or really hiding) occurs in hospitals often times because nurses don’t have full trust in their hospitals’ ability to promptly find and deliver clean working equipment they need to care for their patients in the most timely manner. The nurses’ goal isn’t to negatively affect hospital equipment availability and costs – they want what’s best for their patient – so knowing that when they need something to care for their patient, they are in control and know where it is stashed is really the driving force.

When nurses get a hold of what they perceive is a hard-to-get item or one they think is in limited supply, they may stash it aside – hide it in a closet, tuck it away at the nurse’s station, or find any number of other places to put it where no one else can find it. And, yes, hoarding costs money—equipment that does not “exist” cannot be counted, used for other patients and needs to be replaced.

You asked if this may be also about solving a theft problem, and in fact, the answer is sadly yes. A hospital security professional once described to me that he views his workplace as a giant warehouse full of expensive equipment, with no one watching what goes in and out the doors! There are numerous stories out there about unscrupulous staff stealing expensive mobile equipment and selling it on Ebay® and the like. Here’s a news story about an individual being arraigned on multiple counts of felony theft for stealing hospital equipment. http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/video?id=7710740&syndicate=syndicate%C2%A7ion%5C (ABC Video: Paramedic sold stolen ultrasound machines on eBay). If you take just this one individual’s story alone – the value of just 15 of these devices is over $500,000K.

Hospital equipment is also “lost” for a variety of other reasons: patients are inadvertently discharged without removing therapy devices (for example, wound vacs); unauthorized inter-departmental “borrowing” happens, and devices get accidently tossed out with the laundry. So yes – hoarding, hiding and the associated hunting needed to find this stuff is a huge issue and hospitals are taking notice. With the value of mobile medical equipment in an average 200-bed hospital hovering at around $10M (source: AHRMM), you can image the challenge a large facility like Geisinger faces. And, so you don’t have to guess at the data point – according to the American Hospital Association, mobile medical equipment loss in U.S. hospitals does indeed equate to $3.7B!

So here’s my soapbox about Real-time Locating Systems (RTLS): RTLS meets these challenges by ensuring that all personnel are able to locate every piece of equipment, at every second of the day – no more hiding; no more hunting. Everything that’s tagged shows up on a map – behind walls, in drawers, stashed in a closet – RTLS pinpoints the exact, real-time location of equipment no matter where it is in the hospital. RTLS can also provide alarms and notifications when equipment is leaving the building or is entering an authorized area (the loading dock, the laundry chute) or leaving it’s designated department. I encourage you and your readers to learn more at http://www.teletracking.com/rtls or by reading our blog at http://blog.teletracking.com/

Thanks for the great conversation. Keep it coming!

-Valerie Fritz, TeleTracking