Reducing administrative work

Tokushukai has renewed its materials management system. It began operating at Shonan Kamakura General Hospital and Hayama Heart Center in Kanagawa on 1 June, both of which had helped improve its quality. Deployment is now complete at all 61 planned hospitals.

The new system, ZAITIS, uses barcodes for almost all materials and connects with EMRs. Previously, materials staff entered a ten-digit product code manually when ordering supplies. They now simply scan the barcode with a dedicated reader, reducing administrative work and preventing manual entry errors.

EMR integration also makes it easy to combine material consumption with detailed information on an operation. Yoshiaki Fujimura, Head of Development at Tokushukai Information System, Inc. (TIS), which developed the system, says: “It is useful for analysing which materials are used in each operation.”

The team is also considering sharing lists of unused stock between hospitals so that materials can be transferred where needed. Development staff member Chisako Sugimura says: “Until now, unused stock could only be discarded, so this should also benefit the environment.”

Advances in medicine increase the variety of materials every year, and Tokushukai now handles 50,000 types of product. Renewing the system was essential in this context. Shingo Shintani, Deputy Supervisor in Development, says: “We will keep refining the system so that we can respond as fully as possible to detailed requests and additional functionality needed by staff.”

Tokushukai also plans to renew its HR and payroll system in October.

Source: Tokushukai Newspaper, 30 June 2014, No. 935