December 2008

News

With the nation’s economy heading south, cost containment is becoming more important than ever – along with supply chain management’s necessary contribution. But supply chain managers require data to help them forecast economic trends for processes, products (ranging from commodities to physician preference items to high-end capital equipment) and services.

Today temperature is being managed and manipulated in order to achieve therapeutic benefit. Just as actively warming surgical patients to maintain normothermia pre-to-post-op is now commonly accepted protocol; therapeutically cooling patients post-cardiac arrest to prevent permanent brain injury is also gaining prevalence propelled by a growing number of success stories.

Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) have been knocking the socks off patients, staff and healthcare institutions for years. Today, healthcare facilities are squaring off against HAIs, with departments hospital-wide teaming up to duke it out with resistant organisms. Among the noteworthy: Infection preventionists and supply chain managers.

Self Study Series 
The infection preventionist and SPD  must partner for safe patient care

CS Solutions 
Swabs, single-use towels,  peel pouches 

Infection Protection 
Understanding where the bugs come from
by Suzanne Pear, RN, PhD, CIC 

Next-gen washers, sterilizers get leaner, greener,
yet more feature-rich

As instrumentation becomes more delicate and complex, and CS departments strive for consistent quality and improved process efficiencies, washers and sterilizers are evolving along with it. And vendors certainly are doing their part to make that happen by offering advanced – and flexible — technology that allow instruments to be processed more quickly, safely, reliably and effectively, and more cost effectively than ever before.

Products and Services

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who didn’t agree that data management can lead to supply chain and bottom-line efficiencies. But supply chain managers have to be working with clean data to start. So how do hospital-based supply chain organizations combat errors to ensure effective and efficient data management to keep operations running fluidly and smoothly?

People & Opinions

Newsmaker 
Microfiber’s role in infection prevention
by Mark Hoyle & Bill Slezak 

Clinical Business Strategies 
Moving a clinical storeroom 
by Janet Burda, MS, RRT 

Back Talk 
The last frontier in supply chain  management
by Robert T. Yokl 

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