Delivering high-quality healthcare depends on having tools and supplies available and ready to use when they are needed. But to provide access to the right supplies at the right moment, healthcare organizations must have those supplies stored properly with the right amount of inventory to avoid both waste and scarcity.

By optimizing their storage space, hospital leaders can effectively tackle the ongoing challenges of inventory and supply management, ensuring that their clinicians will always have access to the supplies they need to provide safe, efficient care. An important key to creating optimized storage spaces is choosing and using the right storage solutions.

High-Density Shelving

 Rather than relying on the traditional shelves and cabinets that may have been installed in your facility years ago, optimize your storage with high-density shelving. These systems are available in manual, mechanical-assist and electrically operated styles, depending on the type and weight of supplies to be stored.

“High-density solutions can more than double your storage capacity or free up space for other uses,” says Catherine Adkins, project manager at Storage Systems Unlimited. “These systems maximize space utilization by eliminating aisles and compacting several storage cabinets or shelving systems into a much smaller amount of space. An aisle or access to your supplies is opened only when and where you need it by easily shifting entire rows of shelving.”

This type of shelving has become increasingly popular for optimizing storage space in all sorts of commercial buildings. Storage Systems Unlimited installs high-density storage solutions in hospitals as well as golf courses, college athletic departments, attorney offices and prisons.

Hanging Wire Baskets

Another powerful product for optimizing hospital storage space is the wall mount louvered panel, which can hold wire baskets. These panels with hanging wire baskets can drastically increase capacity and efficiency in supply rooms.

“By using the wire baskets, you eliminate most of the dust that can collect in plastic bins,” Adkins says. “The wire baskets allow for better line of sight for the nurses and supply chain staff when locating certain supplies.”

Many healthcare facilities use wire shelving, but that can create too much wasted space and lead to wasted resources. Supplies often fall behind the wire shelving and are not found until they have expired. Hanging wire baskets, on the other hand, reduce wasted space all around. The supplies cannot fall behind the louvered panels, so inventory control is much easier. Also, the baskets are available with modular dividers as well as label holders of various types and colors, all of which can help staffers keep supplies organized and readily seen.

Carts of All Types

Aside from shelving and cabinetry, carts are an important product for optimizing storage—and there is a wide variety of carts that can help hospitals better manage supplies. Crash carts are always popular, and hospitals are increasingly using in-room or bedside carts.

“Sometimes the supply room is not conveniently located to all exam rooms or patient areas, and having supplies at the bedside will improve patient experience and increase the time staff can spend with the patients,” Adkins says.

In addition, procedure-specific carts can be helpful during traumas or surgeries, when specific items are needed immediately. For example, these carts may be useful in an ER or OR with cases such as malignant hyperthermia, casting or difficult airways.

Computer carts enable safe, secure and efficient solutions by utilizing technology. Healthcare providers can improve data accuracy and patient safety by using computer carts to deliver high-quality patient care. And with point-of-care solution carts, caregivers can readily enter and access patient information by using secure technology at the patient’s bedside.

Storage Systems Unlimited offers 47 cart types, with dozens of variations for each type. Selecting and using the right carts can be a powerful solution for optimizing storage across your facility.

Customized Design

Because every healthcare facility has unique storage needs and available storage spaces, it can be helpful to utilize customized planning and design services for optimizing storage solutions. For example, Storage Systems Unlimited offers planning, design, installation and project management—and, by leveraging long-standing relationships with numerous manufacturers, can mix and match carts and solutions from various manufacturers to meet the needs of each department.

“We aim to be a one-stop shop for material managers and supply chain managers for hospitals, surgery centers and private physician groups across the United States,” Adkins says. “Our ability to customize any shelf, table or cart ensures that we are providing exactly what the end user wants at very competitive pricing.”

With more than 40 years of experience providing customized storage solutions, Storage Systems Unlimited is able to give recommendations for the entire floor plan in a brand-new hospital and provide consulting on revamping existing storage space that needs to be reshaped or updated.

Every day, thousands of items are used in a hospital by various staff members. Some materials must be sterile, and some need to be secured. Others must be in close proximity to the operating room, must be cleaned regularly or need to be readily available to clinicians. 

Organization is the key to managing all this varied inventory and keeping track of individual requirements. However, many hospitals and healthcare organizations struggle to establish and maintain an organized system. In many cases, instruments and supplies are crammed into small spaces that are cramped, unorganized and difficult to access. When doctors and nurses have to spend time searching for the items they need, that means less time providing care to their patients. 

Creating a plan for organizing hospital supplies and instruments can provide important benefits for hospital staff and patients. Consider these six valuable benefits of organization. 

1 | Better Inventory Knowledge

An effective organization system includes inventory tracking. Knowing what you have makes for a more efficient supply chain and limited waste. When hospital supplies are unorganized, there is often a tendency to overstock in an effort to compensate for potential stockout situations—and extra supplies translate into even more overcrowded, unorganized spaces.

On the other hand, when hospitals have an organized supply and replenishment system in place, material managers can quickly gain visibility into current inventory and potential needs. 

2 | Increased Efficiency

When supplies are organized and always available in the right place, hospital staff don’t have to use their time searching for the items they need to care for patients. Organization results in better time management and more efficient outcomes.

The healthcare industry is increasingly focused on doing more, doing it more efficiently and doing it with fewer resources, as evidenced by the new Certified Lean Healthcare Professional (CLHP) designation, says Catherine Adkins, project manager at Storage Systems Unlimited. To earn the designation, healthcare professionals must demonstrate proficiency in various topics including creating a lean culture, understanding process flow, improving process flow, building flow charts, reducing waste, eliminating delays and errors, managing process flow using Kanban, monitoring lean processes, following the principles of lean leadership, and initiating a program of continuous improvement. 

For many healthcare providers, designing and implementing an organization system for supplies is the first step toward building a leaner hospital. 

3 | Improved Patient Care

Streamlining the organization of instruments and supplies doesn’t just make staffers’ jobs easier; it also improves patient care—and patient satisfaction scores.

“From a patient’s perspective, they want to be comfortable and see cleanliness and organization,” Adkins says. “They want the staff to be calm and confident versus frantic and lost. They also want their nurse or doctor to have immediate access to the instruments and tools they need to provide the necessary care and, in some cases, save their life.”

4 | Patient Safety and Regulatory Compliance

When supplies are unorganized, hospitals often over-order supplies because they are unsure about their inventory levels. But with too much supply on hand, some of those supplies will expire before they can be used. And poor organization, clutter and a lack of visibility make it difficult to keep track of when those supplies expire—which can become a liability for the hospital. Using expired supplies can endanger patient safety and make hospitals noncompliant with regulations.

An efficient organization and supply replenishment system, on the other hand, can help ensure that hospitals have just the right amount of supplies at any given time, and that the supplies on hand will be used before they expire. 

5 | Sterile Storage

Regulatory agencies require hospitals to carefully monitor the storage of sterile supplies to avoid contamination. But when hospitals don’t have an effective system for organizing and tracking supplies, meeting those standards can be difficult. A standardized organization system can automate the process of monitoring and guaranteeing sterile storage compliance.

6 | Simplified Staff Training

Consistent organization within a healthcare system helps create systematic processes, and the system can use these processes to train new hires and maintain consistency for travel nurses rotating within the same system or even within the same hospital, Adkins says.

“Healthcare providers are seeking to collaborate with suppliers in new ways to address system integration, industry consolidation and economic pressures,” she says. “Pressure on margins for hospitals is intensifying and may require creative cost management solutions to sustain procurement in the short term as well as the long term. Eliminating wasted product and time is critical to the success of a hospital.”

At Storage Systems Unlimited, we provide all storage-related products for every healthcare department with a choice of multiple manufacturers. We also offer preferred pricing, planning, design, installation and project management for healthcare organization and storage systems. Contact us at 1-888-614-0004 or visit storagesystemsul.com to learn more or request a quote.