STERILE PROCESSING


cause inefficiencies, uality problems, and add cost. any times, a bottleneck at a piece of euipment isnt the result of euipment capacity, but how the workflow is man- aged up and downstream of the piece of euipment. Pauet beliees there must be a paradigm


shift in the SSP departments to begin iewing themseles as manufacturing departments. He recommends SSP leaders learn about ean anufacturing principals, noting how they can start by reaching out to their states anufacturing Etension organiation for assistance with reimagining their workflow and identifying actiities that will hae significant positie impacts in a ery short period of time. hen asked how a SSP department


can measure improements in waste reduc- tion, Pauet offers the following he foundation of ean is based on identifying and employing useful metrics that are then used to improe processes. his is linked together in the Plan o heck ct (P) cycle that ensures improe- ments are continuously happening.  key principle of ean is empowering the oices of the people doing the work to transform and improe the processes. ith regards to ean methodology, imsey says SSP teams can ben- efit from Error Proofing, or Poka-oke in Japanese ean terms, which focuses on creating processes or tasks that eliminate the possibility of making a mistake or error. sing uided orkflows within the


SP racking Software is an eample of this within scope reprocessing, said imsey. he workflows are preprogrammed to fol- low the standardied and reuired steps to correctly reprocess the scope and thus guide the staff member through the process one step at a time.


Reprocessing timing Sometimes the uestion is not what to reprocess or how to reprocess but when to reprocess. Peter Hawryluk, ccount Eecutie, edantage, points to the challenge of haing a uni- ersal epiration date that determines when scopes will need to be repro- cessed, stating Sterile Processing epartments can improe their procedures by correctly and accu- rately identifying the lot numbers. e see throughout the industry many facilities still using stamp guns which can smear or fall off in the sterilier preenting the techni- cians from knowing when the tray has been sterilied. ith our Steriate system, the


Peter Hawryluk


lot numbers will be automatically calcu- lated, and labels will not fall off with our permanent adhesie label. dditionally, the Steriate System remoes handwritten labels and trays. y doing so, the Steriate system remoes human error. his makes it most appropriate for regulatory agencies.


A lesson in missing instrumentation uring the height of the I-19 pan- demic when surgical olumes decreased, the SSP department team at ush niersity edical enter in hicago took the opportunity to search through storage spaces and instrument piles to find miss- ing instruments. hile this work lowered the number of missing instruments from ,00 to ust oer 1,00, the team lacked a workflow to keep the missing numbers from increasing as cases resumed. In January 01, with the missing count


back on the rise to , items, ush niersity edical enters irector of SPH imee auero, partnered with the SEIS consulting team to find a solution to what she terms, the miss- ing instrument nightmare. She describes the process e started with a plan that reiewed


Aimee Baquero


our layout, capacity, staffing, workflows, utiliation data and resources. ith the help of the  leadership, we cleaned up our SP Surgical sset racking Software database by remoing obsolete items and uickly reduced the missing count by 1. e still needed to find a process to


keep instruments in their trays, auero continued. ike many facilities that do comple cases with multiple set-ups, there are challenges with getting all the instru- ments placed back in their trays. sking the  to make changes to their comple processes was not reasonable when we had opportunities for improement in SP. auero notes how her department was


filled with etra instruments Storage rooms with old instrumentation, stuffed cabinets and drawers, and an instrument wall that was eploding at the seams. Her team, in collaboration with the , remoed items that were oerstocked, obsolete and dam- aged, donating unneeded items, labeling the instruments they kept and establishing a reordering system. et, they deeloped a chipping process at receipt of the case cart in decontamination 1.he SSP aigator scans the cart into the SP database, breaks down the cart, and places chips of the same color


42 July 2022 • HEALTHCARE PURCHASING NEWS • hpnonline.com


series into eery tray corresponding to that  case


.he chips are left in the sets through decontamination into assembly and grouped together after being washed


.he assembly aigator passes trays to the team, keeping trays grouped accord- ing to their chips


.hen staff are assembling the trays and encounter a missing item, they simply look into the trays with the corresponding chips to find the missing item o ensure staff fully understood the process and were able to easily follow it, we created a detailed standard work with isual aids and all staff are trained to these workflows, said auero. ur ordering process was also standardied, and our new workflows allow for easy tracking through the approal and receiing processes. hanging to this workflow seemed a


little too easy and we were concerned that we would not see a big change to our miss- ing instrument woes, auero continued. ut, as of arch 0, we hae seen an  reduction in missing instruments and are planning for further reductions throughout the year. auero attributes most of the success of


this process change to standardiation and their leadership team holding staff account- able to the processes. ush niersity edical enter in hicago has outsourced its entire SSP department to SEIS, with auero now sering as irector linical perations at SEIS Instrument anagement Serices.


The challenge of robotics Siler ross Hospital is one of the highest olume facilities for ainci procedures in the hicagoland area. yrell comments on how robotic surgery poses its own uniue challenges to SSP workflows, stating ainci robotic arms reuire multiple


etra steps to process them per the IF. e took a closer look at the process and noticed backlogs in decontam. ur compacity for ultrasonic washing was holding up our process so we purchased a new ultrasonic (etinge riton) to grow our capacity in that area to remoe the bottleneck. rowth in robotics also created growth


in the need for low temperature sterilia- tion capacity, he added. e looked at our options and decided to diersify our modalities in low temp and complement our SP Sterrad 100n steriliers with a Stryker P low temp sterilier. ost of our ainci lenses now flow through our P sterilier along with other miscel- laneous items which has remoed our backlog in the low temp sterilier area.


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