Business Case for the UDI Work Group Report
Overview:
The Business Case for the UDI work group, a formal work group of the Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management’s (AHRMM) Learning UDI Community (LUC) is comprised of more than 75 members representing the association, manufacturing/supplier, hospital, regulatory, consulting, group purchasing organizations (GPOs), and solution provider communities. Within this group are five sub groups that are addressing one of five process flows that could potentially change following healthcare organizations’ adoption of the UDI.
The five typical workflow processes are:
- Commodity Inventory Management
- Specialty Inventory (“Trunk Stock”)
- EHR to Registry
- Adverse Event Reporting
- Product Recalls
For each workflow process, the sub group has analyzed how it currently operates without UDI and then identified how these systems will change with UDI adoption. Descriptions of workflow processes highlight the redundancies in today’s environment and where changes using UDI will lead to streamlined future operations and potential savings opportunities.
The groups have also made recommendations on what hospitals need to do to effectively adopt UDI and incorporate it into ongoing clinical and supply chain operations.
This work is intended to close the knowledge gap between the current realities of supply chain workflow processes, and offer a vision for how UDI adoption will allow for a smoothly functioning supply chain based upon reliable product information.