The US hospitals lose much money through medical supply wastage yearly. According to Elizabeth McLellan, the creator of Partners for World Health, a non-profit establishment, which gathers infirmary supply “waste” from various sanatoriums around Portland Mane, the organization collects medical “fritter” worth $20 million per year (Allen, 2017). Therefore, it implies that health facilities can save millions of dollars annually if they control medical supply wastage effectively, which would help lower hospital overheads and the cost of healthcare access in the long run.
There are various methods that healthcare facilities can apply to curtail medical supply wastage and free much-needed funds to finance other investments. However, the most effective is by offering financial incentives to relevant departments to save more resources. A study conducted by the University of California found that most medical personnel were not aware of how much supplies they disposed of, and paying them bonuses thinned the garbage value by 6% annually (Zygourakis et al., 2017a). Therefore, it implies that proposing financial incentives to relevant hospital departments would diminish the high wattage that it is being witnessed.
The purpose of this proposal is to advance financial incentives as a lasting solution to the current amount of medical supply wastage, which the hospital experiences annually, which will save the facility millions of dollars in medical expenditure. It suggests that the facility should compute the value of reusable medical supply “waste” and encourage the relevant personnel to reduce it by 6% annually. The value of wasted medical tools will be computed by collecting the unused equipment and multiplying the numbers by their market values. A ratio of the value of the waste materials to the total expenditure will then be computed to assess the extent of losses incurred. The medical facility can then use a portion of the savings to offer the involved departments bonuses to motivate them to save more.
The proposal’s target audience is the entire medical personnel, including surgeons, doctors, and nurses. These staff members are the ones who interact with various medical equipment, including syringes, IV fluids, and scalpels when administering treatment to patients. Therefore, they are the best people to identify the used and non-used equipment during and after an operation, or any other medical procedure, for disposal or reuse in other curative procedures.
Implementing this initiative will result in various direct financial benefits to the hospital. For instance, the policy will significantly reduce the amount of money, which the infirmary spends to buy medical supplies. Some of the equipment which the facility disposes of are not used or expired and can be utilized during other medical procedures (Zygourakis et al., 2017b). Reusing such supplies would save the organization finances, which can be used to purchase other equipment which the health center needs. Moreover, the management can spend the saved funds to hire more medical and non-medical personnel who would improve service delivery in the institution, boosting the quality of care offered to patients. Furthermore, it would ease the congestion in the establishment’s garbage management system, which would raise its efficiency, reducing the amount of waste in the facility. Therefore, it should be applied to make sure the business saves more resources.
For the initiative to be successful, it will require intense collaboration between various hospital departments or colleagues. For instance, in the operating room, where most of the disposed apparatus are utilized, nurses and the operating surgeons need to collaborate to mark the wielded appliances from the new ones. The unutilized items can be placed in storage spaces and reapplied during other medical procedures. Moreover, a partnership between the purchasing and operating department is necessary to ensure this initiative’s success. The operating department needs to inform the finance division about the needed purchases regularly to allow them to assess the number of medical supplies saved. This information is necessary to empower the purchasing section to inform the accounting department about the amount of money the hospital saves for practical computation of incentives. Finally, the finance department needs to liaise with the management to find other areas of investing the money for better service delivery. If these professionals lease with each other effectively, the policy will be actualized successfully.
The full implementation of this proposal will not cost the hospital much money. For instance, the presentation to enhance medical supplies’ wastage can be made by the members of the purchasing and finance department. Therefore, it will not cost the hospital any funds to implement this stage of the proposal. However, the institution will need to incur minimal charges to pay for the health personnel’s financial incentives if they reduce their medical supply purchases. Since the bonus amount is a fraction of the money the organization saves yearly, this figure will be minimal compared to the facility’s expenses if the strategy is not implemented.
The health center will regularly assess the percentage of money saved to determine how successful or unsuccessful the strategy is in reducing wastage. For instance, a reduction of 6% of the previous year’s spending will denote success while a slight increase or no decrease will imply failure. However, it is essential to note that the amount of savings will increase significantly if the initiative is successfully implemented. Consequently, the facility should continue offering this incentive to prevent the relevant departments from reverting to their old inefficiencies.
References
Allen, M. (2017). What hospitals waste. ProPublica. Web.
Zygourakis, C., Valencia, V., Moriate, C., Borscadin, C., Catschegn, S., Rajkomar, A., Bozik, K., Hoo, K., Goldberg, A., Pitts, L., Lawton, M., Dudley, R., & Gonzales, R. (2017a). Association between surgeon scorecard use and operating room costs. JAMA Surgery, 152(3), 284-291. Web.
Zygourakis, C., Yoon, S., Valencia, V., Boscardin, C., Moriates, C., Gonzales, R., & Lawton, M. (2017b). Operating room waste: Disposable supply utilization in neurosurgical procedures. Journal of Neurosurgery, 126(2), 620-625. Web.