How one hospital group reduced clinical inventory by 1.2 million dollars

by Keith Gifford
Vice President, Marketing
SpaceTRAX -- InnerSpace Corporation


One of the goals of the InnerCircle Blog is to provide an open forum for our clients to tell their stories. Robert Chavez, Interventional Radiology Department Manager for Sutter Memorial and Sutter General in Sacramento, CA has a story about how spaceTRAX helped reduce his inventory costs by $1.2 million in just two years.

“We were keeping track of more than a million dollars worth of inventory with essentially a clipboard, paper and pencils. I'm responsible for more than 1,500 non-stock supply items valued at about $1.4 million."

Early in 2003, Chavez evaluated several supply management tools, looking for simplicity and accuracy. "I was looking for a simple solution, something that would be easy to implement and very user friendly."

Chavez chose spaceTRAX, our web-based inventory clinical inventory supply management system. This system helps keep track of non-stock inventory by scanning manufacturer barcodes already printed on the packages. Because spaceTRAX is a hosted internet based service, Chavez didn't have to buy or install software or even build or manage a database.

"By using spaceTRAX, we’ve been able to stop what I call ‘comfort buying' Everyone does it to avoid running out of something. I knew we could do a better job of managing our supplies. I just wasn’t able to quantify it until we started using spaceTRAX. The proof is in the numbers.

My Department was saving money within two months of implementing spaceTRAX and after two years, inventory at Sutter Memorial and Sutter General was reduced by an amazing $1.2 million."

There are a lot of professionals like Robert Chavez who have discovered that the best way to eliminate excess inventory, is never to buy it in the first place.