The cost of operating a large medical facility is enormous, especially today with the many changes in health care brought about by the Affordable Care Act impacting how many patients are getting seen. Because incoming revenue has become less for many hospitals and other kinds of medical facilities, hospital administrators and managers are looking at every way to cut their costs of successful, high-quality patient care. If you are still counting supplies during inventory in your medical facility, considering the money-saving benefits of RFID inventory control is a good idea.

What Is RFID Inventory Control?

RFID, radio frequency identification, is the latest advancement in inventory services that allows you to have greater control over your medical inventory. RFID is done by having specially designed markers on medical supplies. RFID tags send data through radio frequency signals to a database that keeps and updates all your medical supplies. For example, if your facility is treating several patients and each one of those patients require urinary catheters, you can check the database for how many catheters are being used each day and how many are still in stock. You will have a bird's eye view of when you need to order more catheters.

Accuracy That Is Above Old-Fashioned Counting By Hand

If you are looking for ways to reduce operating costs, you may feel intimidated by the initial investment into RFID inventory services. However, when you stop to consider how many losses you may have reported in the past due to human error occurring during old-fashioned methods of inventory, you can see how your initial investment in RFID technology will pay itself off in the future. Counting supplies and medications by hand can also be time-consuming, also a loss you can count, as you have to pay employees to do the counting. The money-saving benefits of RFID inventory control are great.

Ambulatory Supplies Can Be Tracked And Easily Recorded

As you maintain tighter inventory control over the supplies and medications being used in your medical facility, you may wonder about how to implement the same type of inventory over the supplies you pay for in your ambulatory services. RFID inventory control for ambulatory supplies can be integrated in your facility database, Workers only need to use a hand-held scanner for recording the supplies in an ambulance, and the system automatically takes it away from the central database, leaving you with an accurate summary of supplies used and needed by your facility's ambulances.

As society moves faster and faster in to the digital age, it makes sense to start thinking about RFID technology for your inventory control. For more information, contact Instant Inventory Service or a similar company.