Data Analysis of Plastic Surgery Instrument Trays Yields Significant Cost Savings and Efficiency Gains

Dr. Wood presented the impact of OpFlow instrument tray rationalization at the 63rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the Southeastern Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons, held virtually on June 6-7, 2020.

As part of a larger, hospital-wide project, this 3-month data collection and analytics-driven tray rationalization process on two high usage instrument trays by the Plastic Surgery service line yielded impressive results.

Following intraoperative data collection on instrument usage and a comprehensive review process, 45.1% of instruments were removed from the General Plastics tray and 36.7% were removed from the Breast Reconstruction tray. That resulted in a total of 2,652 instruments removed from circulation for those two tray types, which can now be re-allocated as inventory and re-purposed to other trays or hospitals within the system, and no longer incur avoidable depreciation from unnecessary processing.

The removal of the instruments yielded an estimated savings of $163,800 in direct cost avoidance for re-purchase and $69,441 in annual re-sterilization savings. Yearly, the removal of the instruments is projected to save 383.5 hours of personnel time for the sterile processing department in tray assembly alone, and significantly reduced the average OR set-up time.

The findings concluded that an analytics-driven method applying empiric usage data enables meaningful change in the OR, related to instrument re-purchase and processing cost avoidance, SPD & OR efficiency gains, and improved quality and safety in sterile processing.

Click here for the full abstract