Hi Everyone,
We are in the process of building a perpetual inventory in our OR, who is using Epic Optime for their EHR. We are in discussion with Infor to purchase and implement the Clinical Bridge to help with the automation of inventory depletion. Eventually we would also like to use it to implement POU throughout the hospital and in our clinics.
Current state the OR loads all new items into the Epic item master manually and inventory is non-stock, just-in-time coming directly from the vendor. We are a small pediatric hospital with no true storeroom on-site so there is little room for additional storage in our OR other than for central sterile, center core (housing service area items) and the cath lab.
Future state we would like to use the clinical bridge interface to pull the item master into Epic. We would also like to use the depletion interface to decrement our perpetual inventory, however Infor has said this can only be done with preference card items. The problem that we have is that not items used in the procedure are preference card items, about half get pulled ad-hoc from the center core by the Nurse at the time of the procedure. We would need a way to capture and decrement that as well. Infor recommended using Pars, which it appears some of you are using, however the center core has approximately 6000 items and they are not willing to par count. We considered possibly using POU for the center core however the Nursing staff is not willing to do the additional scanning required. They may be swayed into scanning if they were able to pull the SN and lot into Epic through POU. (is this possible?)
Here are the options we suggested to our OR Team:
Option 1
1. Pull items based on preference card. Use clinical bridge to deplete inventory at the time the case cart is packed (the day before the procedure).
2. Use Epic usage report to deplete additional used items when procedures have been closed for the day.
3. Use handheld scanner to return unused preference card items to inventory at the end of the day.
4. Perform cycle counts early in the morning before prepping new case carts.
Option 2
1. Pull items based on preference card. Use clinical bridge to deplete inventory at the time the case cart is packed (the day before the procedure).
2. Use POU to deplete additional items used as they are pulled from the center core.
3. Use handheld scanner to return unused preference card items to inventory at the end of the day.
4. Perform cycle counts early in the morning before sterile techs begin pulling inventory for case carts.
Can anyone share their experience using the Clinical Bridge with Optime? Does anyone know if Clinical Bridge can be used with the Epic usage report rather than the preference card, or both?
Thanks in advance.
