It’s important to surgery centers to run as efficiently as possible – in other words, as lean as possible – while providing excellent patient care. So, it’s often surprising to surgery centers when they review their inventory and realize how many SKUs they are carrying – and how much it’s costing them.
Decreasing your SKU count has a lot of benefits for surgery centers that help to streamline operations and reduce supply costs.
Benefits of decreasing your SKU count:
- Save storage space in the OR
Identify and combine all supplies needed into a single pack – from OR setup to cleanup. Include single sterile items that you might otherwise take from the storeroom during a procedure. - Reduce shelf space in your storeroom
By consolidating all of the items you need for each procedure pack, you’ll minimize the need to keep bulk stock in your storeroom. - Spend less time managing supplies
Create all-in-one procedure packs and clinicians won’t need to leave the OR to get extra items from the storeroom. They can focus more on patients, instead of picking supplies. - Lower your inventory carrying costs
When you standardize by product and manufacturer – and consolidate supplies in packs – you’ll reduce both SKU count and inventory levels.
To make sure your surgery center is a lean, clean, well-oiled machine – review your inventory and look for opportunities to standardize. If you don’t have the time to review it yourself, then ask your distributor to help! At Cardinal Health, we have a dedicated ASC team that helps customers find savings through standardization processes – like decreasing your SKU count and consolidating items in packs. To get more information on the different ways Cardinal Health’s ASC team can help your surgery center, click here.