Inventory management of surgical supplies and sterile instruments in hospitals: a literature review

Abstract

Operating rooms are considered a significant revenue source, as well as the main source of waste and cost, among the hospital's departments. Any cost savings in operating rooms will have a broad financial impact. Over the last decades, many researchers and practitioners have conducted studies to deal with the issue of managing surgical supplies and instruments, which are highly affected by surgeons' preferences. The purpose of this article is to present an up-to-date review of research in the field of inventory management of surgical supplies and instruments. We have analysed the literature in a systematic manner and organised the identified papers into two groups: the papers that were published by scientific researchers and developed optimisation techniques and the papers that were published by practitioners and reported their observations of the current issues in the operating room. We also identify the future research directions leading to operating room inventory cost reduction.

Approaches to the rationalization of surgical instrument trays: Scoping review and research agenda

“…Two main concerns seem to permeate the healthcare industry worldwide [1]: reduction of public investments and rise in care demand. According to OCDE [2], while government spending in health remained constant at average 8.8% of the GDP from 2013 to 2018, demand for healthcare services is constantly increasing, resulting in overcrowded systems that potentially expose patients to risks and compromise the quality of care.…”

“…ST management is centered in four main questions: (i) which instruments should be placed on the STs; (ii) in what quantities; (iii) which STs are used in which surgical procedures; and (iv) how many STs of each type should be held in inventory. While (i) and (ii) are affected by surgeons' preferences, (iii) and (iv) depend on the frequency and scheduling of procedures in the surgical center [1].…”

“…ORs are cost-intensive units [9] to which redundant or unused materials are constantly supplied. Empirical research has shown that improving the management of surgical instruments offers an opportunity to signi cantly reduce OR costs [10,11,1].…”

“…Studies suggest that elimination of unnecessary or redundant instruments in STs may promote time savings [16], less operational effort [17] and smaller cost in ORs [18], without negative effects to patients [19][20][21]. Rationalization of surgical instruments may also signi cantly reduce sterilization time [22], ergonomic risks [1] and unnecessary purchases of instruments [21].…”

Research, Development, and Evaluation of Application Effect of the in-out Storage Management System for Department Consumables

“…For highvalue operating room consumables [3] , zero inventory management involving code scanning and charging is used [4,5] . Consumable information data are managed based on the the supply, processing, and distribution (SPD) mode, and consumable inventory management is information based [1,6,7] . Post et al [8] proposed the construction of the information-based data warehouse management system of the i2b2 Data Warehouse.…”