A global healthcare provider, treating over 3 million patients every year across 20+ hospitals and nearly 300 outpatient facilities began exploring new technologies and industry best practices to reduce errors, streamline operational tasks, and improve the patient experience overall.
The main campus receives up to 25 full truckloads and approximately 2,500 packages daily, including both PO and non-PO items like patient packages and personal deliveries. Their operation serves almost 7,000 unique delivery locations across the enterprise. In order to ensure accuracy and end-to-end visibility, this healthcare provider began looking for a supply chain solution that could complement the capabilities of Oracle Cloud and provide mobile functionality across their facilities.
As they reflected on processes to improve, their primary concern was to reduce time spent on supply chain related tasks and create standardization across their operations, particularly at their nearly 200-acre main campus in the Midwest with 60 connected buildings. Paper-based methods were slowing down processes and taking precious time away from clinical staff, whose focus on patient care takes priority over supply chain tasks. As their operations continued to expand across the US and internationally, the organization recognized the need for a single source of truth that would provide full, end-to-end visibility across their entire campus and complex supply chain network.
“One of the unique things that we have been working on over the last few years is developing and deploying a global model. The goal here was to try to be as consistent as possible in how we're deploying tools, what we're deploying, and the processes that we're following,” said one of their supply chain and procurement executives.
After evaluating their options, RF-SMART provided the comprehensive solution these medical centers needed to standardize operations and would allow them to build automated systems for supply chain tracking and accuracy across their growing global footprint. Built with Oracle Cloud at its core, RF-SMART's full suite of healthcare functionality is designed to simplify and speed up supply chain tasks while maintaining Oracle Cloud as the single source of truth.
RF-SMART's barcode scanning technology transformed receiving operations by eliminating manual data entry and providing instant visibility into package movements. With RF-SMART's Multi-Line Receiving (MLR), the clinical staff can efficiently receive incoming Purchase Orders (POs), Transfer Orders (TOs), or Advance Shipment Notices (ASNs) with as few clicks as possible. "Rather than having to type in a PO number, which is about 11 characters, we're able to just scan the barcode to start the receiving process.”
They saw how the efficiency gains could transfer over to other areas of their organization and benefit their clinics, where nursing staff and clinicians were responsible for the replenishment and counts across their PAR closets. Over time, these clinics developed their own standard operating procedures (SOPs) which created a visibility gap for the supply chain management teams. This opened the possibility to challenges like inaccurate inventory levels, unnecessary waste, and a lack of agreement amongst staff. After seeing the success of RF-SMART as a dependable, accurate, and mobile solution – this organization decided to roll-out RF-SMART's PAR Location Management across more than 150 clinics.
Before implementing RF-SMART, healthcare workers would have to backtrack when package recipients reported missing or unreceived deliveries. “We needed an easier process to answer those 15 to 20 questions that could come in a day from patients or clinicians asking where their package is.” RF-SMART provides confidence in the history of package movements from the moment they are received to when they reach their destination across the thousands of unique delivery locations. The organization can rely on RF-SMARTs Delivery to provide real-time data transactions and tracking of their expected and unexpected packages. "The efficiency is hard to quantify but being able to standardize our receiving and package tracking into a single workflow has been a gamechanger.”
“One of the unique things we found is that our employee badges have a QR code on them. It houses the employee ID number, which makes it an easy process to scan the back of their badge when a package is handed off.” This eliminated the need for physical signatures while maintaining accountability, recording time stamps, and identifying the physical location to retroactively trace the movement of packages. The photo confirmation feature proved especially valuable for after-hours deliveries, providing visual proof of package placement and significantly reducing follow-up inquiries about missing items. “The visibility really is the key, and it's not necessarily just focused on the main campus. That same visibility now exists everywhere.”
Beyond the functionality that gets used on a daily basis, this healthcare provider has expressed appreciation for the RF-SMART team as a whole. Between the consultative and integrity-driven sales process, and the reliable support and expertise they can count on from the customer success team – the organization can lean on RF-SMART as a trusted advisor.
That trust works both ways too! Throughout this multi-year relationship between RF-SMART and this healthcare provider, they have continuously provided advanced, high-quality insight into supply chain challenges and the areas in immediate need of a scalable, mobile, accurate solution. With their feedback, RF-SMART has successfully built, tested, and launched a handful of new solutions or key functionality updates designed with healthcare professionals at the core.
“For us, success is defined as our ability to provide patient care. Our clinical caregivers need to have the confidence that when they reach for a product it’s going to be there. RF-SMART is a key enabler for this as it touches so many steps in the process, whether it’s receiving, PAR counts, deliveries, or order picking RF-SMART provides the confidence that we can support our clinical caregivers and patients.”