by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | February 20, 2015
From the January/February 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
With preset cycles, the machines also allow for mistake-proofing of proper sterilization parameters for the different types of surgical instruments we process.” Luker estimates the machines, which can hold up to 24 full-size instrument sets in one cycle, save around five minutes of manual loading and unloading per cycle, along with reducing the burden of work on team members.
This compares to the previous sterilizers, which could accommodate only 12 full-size instrument sets and loading/unloading had to be coordinated, monitored, and performed manually for every cycle. “The automation and increased capacity of our new machines has reduced bottlenecks and doubled our sterilizer throughput,” Luker says.
While the automated machines are about 13 percent more expensive than non-automated sterilizers, Luker says, “In the end, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.” Sterilizer manufacturer Belimed offers a service where representatives come in and streamline a hospital’s sterile processing department. They do simulation models, showing where the bottlenecks are and how to eliminate them. They also look at steam quality.
“More and more investment is being put into, ‘how do we make it more of a manufacturing facility?’” says Joe Smith, a product manager at Belimed. “It’s become much more of a manufacturing, reprocessing department.”
“What we’re taking out is not the time it takes to wash something, and disinfect, and sterilize,” Smith says. “We’re taking out all the waste: the time a machine takes to fill with water. The time it takes for a person to walk from point A to point B. When a cycle is done and the door opens, it’s dry, instead of opening the door and adding 30 more minutes onto the cycle.”
Smith says this year Belimed will be focusing their sterilization technology on accommodating more instrument trays per load, larger tray sizes and greater weight, and a user interface that’s easier to manage. And the latest trends are not just about speed and efficiency. Nancy Chobin, assistant vice president for sterile processing at St. Barnabas Health in New Jersey, says the automated washers and sterilizers can take up a lot of space, which is something that a lot of sterile processing managers just don’t have. “When you look at equipment, you can’t just look at productivity,” Chobin says. “You have to look at how much space you can save.”
Luker says that with an OR volume of more than 77 cases per day, the current demand is m13.8 instrument sets per case cart, with an average of 53.4 instruments in each set. “As a result, we need sterilizers with the capacity to meet our customer demand,” Luker says. To address the need for more productivity without additional space, Belimed has been focusing on minimizing equipment footprint while maximizing throughput capacity.
