Mismanaged medical devices: the true cost to the healthcare system

Rob Kinnersley, healthcare lead, Idox, touches upon the impact managing medical devices correctly, and incorrectly, has on healthcare systems. 

When it comes to asset management in a hospital, there is much more at stake when equipment goes missing or is simply misplaced. It's no secret that medical equipment can be costly – looking back to the winter of 2020, headlines focused on the UK Government's record spending in response to the pandemic. It is estimated that from March to early August the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Cabinet Office secured an additional 26,000 mechanical ventilators at a total cost of £569 million, according to the BMJ.

With this additional investment poured into the health service, there lies great opportunity to overhaul asset management processes that are no longer fit for purpose and could be improved. The pandemic has highlighted the value and scarcity of life-saving medical equipment, while also presenting an opportunity to review and manage its maintenance.

For the NHS, making use of life-critical equipment which is already on site through deploying a market-specific asset tracking and management system is an ideal way of maximising this investment. Aside from reducing unnecessary expenditure on new equipment, the value of efficient asset tracking and management can also be realised through enhancing operational efficiency, understanding peaks in demand through data insights and improving patient safety.

Real world issues

Unsurprisingly, the pandemic has highlighted areas within the health service that desperately need support and streamlining while teams were stretched and tested to the extremes. Medical equipment is expensive and often difficult to source and maintain, which is why each tool is in many ways more valuable than first perceived at face value. Taking Chesterfield Hospital as an example, it employs a team of 4,500 staff and 150 volunteers, across 20 wards, overseeing 550 beds many of which are used to care for the 22,000 patients that receive complex surgery each year.

On a site of this size, keeping track of critical medical equipment isn’t easy. Ahead of rolling out Idox’s asset tracking solution, Clinical Engineering (CE) teams tasked with audit and facilities management, spent hours manually logging equipment locations on paper. They would also find themselves ordering new equipment to replace what they simply could not find. Medical equipment that is misplaced, accidentally or otherwise, can not only be an inconvenience for staff but potentially life threatening for patients in need of urgent care. These issues are not new; however the pandemic has brought them into sharper focus.

The need for visibility

Naturally, when a health crisis arises the entire focus of an organisation is how best to navigate it. While this is necessary, there are unseen impacts when eyes are elsewhere which aren’t always considered. For example, facilities and operational issues are swiftly deprioritised, however they are fundamental to delivering the best care for patients.

Equipment such as heart monitors, bladder scanners, ECG recorders, infusion devices, pressure relieving equipment and wheelchairs, T34 Syringe Drivers are all examples of some of the expensive and life-critical day-to-day equipment a hospital manages. Additionally, medical equipment won’t always remain on site but will be loaned out to a variety of organisations within the community. This adds another dynamic to effectively tracking these devices and managing the increased likelihood of them going missing. Therefore, visibility of equipment location, which gives CE teams better oversight to help them do their jobs more efficiently, and clinical staff more time to spend on patient care, is so important.

Small actions can have big consequences, and this is certainly true in a hospital. A defibrillator not being placed back in its usual location could be disastrous when clinical teams need to rapidly use one in an emergency. For urgent equipment such as that, any additional and unnecessary time spent trying to locate the item could have an impact on patient survival, so the ability to quickly identify its location could be life changing.

Knock-on impacts

Missing equipment is just one piece of the puzzle, though. As part of their remit, CE regularly engages with regulatory bodies like the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) which is responsible for sending out notifications and alerts regarding manufacturer updates on certain devices. As a matter of safety, medical devices must be regularly maintained and kept under constant review. If there’s even a minor fault, it is flagged immediately to CE teams to recall the items. Taking a risk with potentially faulty equipment can cause a chain reaction of injuries and prompt scrutiny on the already strained NHS. Therefore, the pressure on CE teams is so intense; it is their responsibility to oversee repairs alongside the manufacturer. Failure to locate and log these changes could cause serious harm.

Asset management in a healthcare facility must be taken seriously and managed effectively. It’s easy for teams to become frustrated and anxious under the huge weight of responsibility for manually tracking critical devices and logging them on paper, but also having to account for and replace missing equipment – in the face of an increasingly tight hospital budget. The cost of lost equipment can hit hard; T34 Syringe Drivers, for example, can each cost around £1,500.00 which accumulates to a significant amount over time as hundreds can be misplaced throughout a year. What’s more, items such as these can be perceived as low cost by busy staff or even patients – but can collectively leave hefty dents in waning medical equipment budget allocations. At a time when government spending is under the microscope more than ever, safeguarding existing equipment and devices on premises should be top priority for NHS hospitals and Trusts.

Research from NHS Transformation Directorate found that hospitals using technology to locate medical equipment were able to release over 140,000 hours of clinical time back to patient care and reduce time to find a tagged asset to less than 25 seconds. With such efficiency and productivity gains to be made, implementing asset tracking technology has the potential to transform patient care across the NHS.

Keeping the patient care promise

It's clear that to properly manage a diverse range of medical equipment across the NHS requires investment and leveraging technology. Against a backdrop of tightening budgets and greater healthcare challenges, it is accepted that technology must be relied upon more heavily than ever before.

There are tools available now which digitally log and track the locations of all devices automating much of what used to involve a clipboard, paper, and pen. Enhancing the hospital’s capability by introducing tracking technology gives a panoramic view of where each piece of equipment is located and helps reduce time spent searching for them. To counter the costly, laborious, and potentially risky issue of maintaining a huge library of medical equipment, healthcare organisations should embrace the technology specifically built to address the challenges they face. Harnessing data insight to predict changes in demand would also allow for better demand forecasting, which would alleviate some of the pressure, too. In a hospital, a matter of minutes can define a life-or-death situation, so every second saved using technology is invested in social good.