How RFID is Revolutionizing Medical Linen and Uniform Management
Managing your medical textile inventory is no joke. There are a number of complicated challenges involved with medical linens and uniforms, including cross-contamination hazards, linen loss, staff training, compliance with government regulations and fluctuations in inventory needs.
With these challenges in mind, many healthcare laundries and medical facilities are using a new technology to help streamline medical textile processing and inventory management: RFID.
What is RFID?
RFID, or Radio Frequency Identification, consists of two parts: an RFID tag or label and an RFID reader. RFID tags contain a microchip that can store and process information, along with an antenna that can send out signals using radio waves, and an item-specific serial number. The RFID reader will receive the signals from the RFID tag and transmit the read results to a computer program or other accessible interface.
In the healthcare textile setting, RFID tags are sewn into uniforms, linens and other textile items, allowing the healthcare laundry and medical facility to access valuable tracking and processing information about each unique item.
While healthcare professionals worry about RFID’s effects on electromagnetic equipment necessary for healthcare, like MRI machines, as well as its effect on patients, many healthcare laundries use RFID chips that are non-ferrous (meaning that they do not contain any iron or steel) and are non-magnetizing (meaning that they do not create a magnetic field or are affected by magnetic fields), rendering these chips completely safe for use in healthcare settings and for patients.
3 Reasons Medical Facilities are Using RFID
There are multiple benefits that come along with an RFID textile management system. Here’s why this technology is growing in popularity among medical facilities:
1. RFID improves operational efficiency.
Efficiency is of the utmost importance in the healthcare industry, and the bottom line is that you can’t afford to let your healthcare linen and uniform needs slow down your operations. However, you also can’t afford to slack off when it comes to managing your healthcare textiles, because they’re essential to the daily function of your medical facility.
RFID helps with this issue by making inventory management easier overall. There’s no more counting by hand every single item in your inventory, because RFID can keep track for you.
An RFID system prevents order errors because each order is electronically filled at the processing plant, so you’re not left in a panic because the wrong number or type of item was delivered. You won’t run out of stock, which eliminates the need to cancel procedures due to a lack of inventory. Your time can be spent focusing on other aspects of the healthcare practice, because RFID is counting and managing your inventory for you, eliminating mix-ups and making sure that you always have the items that you need.
2. RFID reduces losses.
One of the reasons that healthcare linen and uniform management is so crucial is that the healthcare industry loses millions of dollars every year because of misplaced or stolen textiles. Whether your patients are taking towels with them or your employees are throwing out linens because they think they’re too soiled to be laundered hygienically, RFID can prevent losses by helping you to pinpoint the source of losses faster, allowing you to create contingency plans to eliminate these costs and save money in the long run.
Additionally, RFID can keep track of how much linen you’re using on any given basis, giving you a long-term picture of your facility’s needs and fluctuations in use. You can create customized inventory tracking reports that allow you to adapt to your facility’s linen and uniform demands, so you can eliminate excess inventory that you’re paying for but don’t actually need or increase your inventory as your facility is growing so that you won’t run out.
3. RFID gives you more time to focus on your patients.
At the end of the day, the point of improving operational efficiency and reducing losses is to be able to spend more of your resources on your patients. With improved inventory management through RFID, keeping track of your healthcare linens and textiles is just one less thing that you have to focus on that doesn’t relate to patient care. Both you and your employees will be able to spend more time working with patients and improving their health, not worrying about how many towels are in your storage area.
Simply put, you get access to the data that you need to make informed decisions for your healthcare facility without putting in hours and hours of work that would’ve been better spent figuring out how to best care for your patients and grow your medical practice.
Introducing RFID
If you’re considering switching to a medical linen or uniform program that utilizes RFID, it’s important to do your research. Not all RFID programs are the same. For example, some programs only track uniforms, or may not provide comprehensive or easily-accessible usage reports, or may use RFID chips that contain ferrous or magnetizing materials. Before selecting an RFID-based linen or uniform program, make sure you know what benefits of an RFID program are most important to your facility and choose a program that emphasizes those benefits.
Additionally, make sure that any healthcare laundry you’re considering has enough experience with RFID to make this technology beneficial to you. As with any new initiative, working out the kinks can take some time, and you don’t want your medical facility to be a test subject.
Whether RFID is the right choice for your facility or not, it’s an amazing time in the healthcare industry when technology is being used to transform tasks like medical inventory management, leading to a better and healthier future for our communities. Hopefully, the future holds more innovations like RFID that allow medical practices to focus on patient care instead of management tasks.
HandCraft Services offers the highest-quality medical linen and apparel products, along with highly efficient services.
Our products can minimize your costs, enhance your facility’s image and improve overall patient and staff satisfaction. With high-tech systems and technologies, HandCraft sets the pace for healthcare linen. From using copper-infused, anti-microbial fabric to using RFID chips to track inventory, we stay on the leading edge of our field, so you can stay on the leading edge of yours.
For more information, give us a call at 888.358.8671.
