The Label Crisis in Hospitals
“We are managing 50,000 unique items across 29,000 par locations that may need updates at any given moment in our hospital. This means thousands of labels for our supply chain staff to print and place in the approximately 350 rooms where we store all of these items. It’s just not workable anymore and is a major waste of time and resources.”
These are the words from a full service academic medical center and reflect this shocking reality on the ground for nearly every hospital in America. How is it even possible that staff have to run around updating tens of thousands of labels throughout the hospital on average twice a month? In fact, for most large hospitals, there are as many as 100,000 labels to manage at any given time!
These labels need to be updated with the product’s current status, such as whether or not it’s been recalled, if it’s out of stock, discontinued, on back order, or expired, if the product number has changed due to a change of manufacturer, and so on. In many cases, staff don’t have the time to print new labels, so they just write updates by hand on the existing label. And imagine how difficult it is to ensure that you’ve gone to every single location for every single product – it just doesn’t happen! There’s no real time information about a product’s status and there’s no humanly possible way of staying on top of it.
Regular and reliable product updates have become increasingly important due to ongoing supply chain disruptions – whether from natural disasters, a shortage of materials, or other factors. When any of these problems occur, it creates a bottleneck and has a ripple effect all the way down to the point of care where needed products may not be available, thereby putting patients at risk.
VUEMED’s Cutting-Edge Approach to Solving the Label Crisis
Welcome to VueStat™, an innovative new Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) solution created by VUEMED that solves this critical item status notification and label management issue. VueStat displays all required product details on a label-size screen, using e-ink text, images, QR codes, barcodes, etc. It provides and updates readable information remotely and in real time. VueStat offers a variety of label-size screens to display all relevant product details, barcode(s), inventory status, warnings, par levels, approved item substitutes, and so on.
With VueStat, updates are made from one central, virtual web-based portal, communicating with thousands of ESLs and updating their content within seconds across all par locations. Imagine the benefits to patients when a product’s recall status is posted in every location simultaneously, wherever that product is found. The efficiency and visibility that VueStat provides are a game changer for the healthcare industry.
Each ESL also conveys back a wide range of information, such as varying levels of stock on hand, need for replenishment, replenishment fulfilled, etc. VueStat reports specific feedback to the Cloud for analysis so that the appropriate party has the proper information available to do their job and be proactive at handling any issue.
If you work for a hospital and are interested in learning more about VueStat, contact us here: https://vuemed.com/request-a-demo/
