Knowledge Bank

Preference cards have been the mainstay of operating room (OR) inventory management processes but add to nurse workload and increase costs by introducing variability into supply management processes. The purpose of this quality improvement project was to implement an OR automated inventory management system to decrease nurse workload and increase efficiency by improving preference card accuracy, decreasing add-on supplies, and decreasing cost per case. A pre-post design was used to evaluate workload, preference card accuracy, add-on supplies, and cost per case outcomes. Nurse workload was decreased in the categories of supply management processes and cost of supplies. There was increase in workload noted with documentation of supplies. A four-month 7.69% improvement in preference card accuracy saved the hospital 182,285 U.S. dollars by reducing cost per case by 86.72 U.S. dollars. Add-on supplies were reduced by 4,177 producing a 20% reduction. The automated inventory management system is projected to reduce total cost by $546,855 in the first year of use.