SxanPro and surplus medical supplies: Inventory’s flip side

Shortages aren’t the only medical supply challenge hospitals are facing.

Inventory management has always been a rather thorny challenge for U.S. health systems—one made worse in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic and not just in terms of product shortages. Health systems, it turns out, also have a surplus medical supplies problem. Just look at the numbers:

U.S. hospitals reported nearly $50 billion in combined medical and surgical supply costs in 2021—averaging $13.5 million per hospital, according to the Medicare Cost Report.¹
In the OR alone, major hospitals across the United States collectively throw away at least $15 million a year in unused surgical supplies that could otherwise be salvaged and used to ease critical shortages, improve surgical care and boost public health in developing countries.²
78% of hospitals rely on manual inventory management, which doesn’t easily capture expiration dates or lot numbers.³

Discover how covid-19 sharpened Medline’s focus on long-term planning.

“What is needed is a mind shift to think about healthcare supplies as assets rather than disposable items,” write Cassandra Thiel, PhD, assistant professor at New York University School of Medicine and Daniel J. Vukelich, Esq., president of the association, Medical Device Reprocessors. “To ensure the best outcomes possible for healthcare workers and patients, we must urgently identify ways to use medical supplies more efficiently. …the time has come for hospitals to reduce and reuse what they can to create necessary resiliency and capacity in the supply chain.”⁴

Medline, in partnership with SxanPro, a healthcare supply management technology company with the only patented mobile technology for scanning UDI barcodes, is looking to help hospitals do just that.

$15 million

The amount of unused surgical supplies in the OR alone thrown away each year by major hospitals across the United States⁶

Easy to use and relatively inexpensive

Easy to use and relatively inexpensive, SxanPro apps have more than 4 million products in their database and are able to immediately and accurately capture manufacturer information on medical supplies and capital assets, including expiration dates and lot numbers—without the need for an IT or WI-FI connection. For minimal investment, hospitals can make proactive, data-driven decisions about surplus medical supplies and reduce the labor involved.

Through Medline, customers have access to two SxanPro scanning solutions:

JUDI: In one scan, JUDI can populate 10 data points, including manufacturer, reference number, description, lot number, expiration date, serial number, date of manufacturer, brand, catalog number, FDA product code, FDA product description, 510(k) clearance information, and global medical device nomenclature (GMDM) description.The app solves such everyday problems as consignment inventory management, suture cart management, go-back/return bin reduction, selling or moving unused inventory, FDA product categorization, expired inventory tracking, non-stock inventory management, and new product intake.
LINK: An app that makes physical inventories smarter, LINK matches UDI data to a master data file and turns this information into actionable data. Hospitals can see the location, quantity and value of their inventory, identify gaps, and make PAR location changes based on usage. It also enables them to stay ahead of product expirations by alerting them to high-risk areas. By capturing products before they expire, LINK makes it possible for hospitals to transfer, return or sell unused items before they go wasted. By matching usage with expiration date data, a 500-bed hospital, for example, can on average recover $100,000 within 90 days by transferring, returning or selling unused supplies.⁵

Perioperative—a great place to start

Medline is already putting SxanPro to use at two major U.S. health systems, where larger inventory management initiatives are underway, particularly in the perioperative setting.

“Our partnership with SxanPro technology has enhanced our ability to better support our perioperative supply chain optimization services,” says Kim Haines, BSN, RN, certified OR nurse and Lean-certified Clinical Program Director for Perioperative Services at Medline. “JUDI can have a huge financial impact simply by moving outdate checks from monthly to quarterly, saving a lot of time and money. And LINK is a great tool that can provide relief to a very manual and labor-intensive process required for annual physical inventory counts.”

Necessity—the mother of invention

SxanPro is the brainchild of Founder and President Ashlea Souffrou, who has spent her career in the medical device space and witnessed firsthand the waste that health systems incur from surplus medical supplies.

A mother of three, she launched SxanPro at the height of the covid-19 pandemic—“the absolute worst time to launch any company”—but found herself well positioned in the pandemic’s wake and supply chain issues that followed. “Hospitals became afraid of backorders and overpurchased, dedicating entire rooms and warehouses to surplus inventory with no visibility to it,” Souffrou says. “We’re able to give them that visibility so they can determine whether they need an item, and if they don’t, whether they can sell or return it for a cost recovery.”

Learn more about how Medline helps their partners find better inventory management strategies every day.