Healthcare Cost Solutions, LLC

Most hospital operating rooms and surgery centers use preference lists as a sort of "recipe" for identifying all the items that are to be picked prior to each surgical case.  Frequently, preference lists are badly out-of-date and are a low priority for review and update.  The lack of systematic review and update of preference lists creates an enormous amount of unnecessary work and oftentimes increases costs of waste.  Even if there is a good process for collecting unopened, unused items at the end of each surgical case, significant time is required to deal with sorting and returning the items to inventory.  Just as important, OR staff often spend time running after the same items case after case because some recurring items are not yet on a preference list.  Often, staff assigned the responsibility for review and update of preference lists are too busy staffing OR rooms, caring for patients, or doing other administrative work.

HCS's Preference List Usage Analysis report was created to facilitate a periodic systematic review of actual items used for each type of surgical case. Based on patterns of use, the report applies an algorithm to evaluate each item on each preference list and recommend changes such as increasing or decreasing quantities, adding or deleting items, and other actions that will help better ensure that the preference lists have the right items in the right quantities. Periodically rerunning the report (e.g. quarterly) serves as an ongoing process to review and update preference lists as changes in practice and preference occur over time.  See the sample pages below.

The report summarizes numbers of items to be added, removed, quantities increased and decreased, etc. to provide a foundation from which to monitor, over time, where processes are getting better or worse. If most recommendations to reduce quantities and remove items were taken, along with adding items and increasing quantities as recommended, the number of returns will fall, and just as importantly, a higher probability that the items needed for a particular surgery are available and in the right quantity when needed.

Please let us know if you have questions or wish to get a proposal for an analysis of your preference lists.

See also Preference List Waste Analysis and Preference List Item Location Optimization