What Strategies Have You Used to Standardize Your Surgical Packs?

Conduct garbage rounds
We call them garbage rounds. Twice a year, we ask our staff to save instead of discard unused those items that were in their packs. We'll check every day for a month what's being thrown away and them eliminate them from the packs. It might be a little thing, like towels or drapes or suture bags or an extra sheet. At month's end, we'll call the vendor and change the pack. We've found this strategy saves a lot of money. Because surgeons aren't using the items, they're not likely to even notice what's no longer in the pack.

Cheryl Wolf, RN, BS, CNOR
Director, Perioperative Services
Irvington General Hospital
Irvington, N.J.
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Two rules: no waste and no price spikes
Make sure that everything in the pack gets used every time. And items in the pack must be the same price as individual items, or we won't get them.

Show your docs what items cost
Let surgeons view the actual cost of their custom packs/ items, and then show them what other cost-effective docs are using. Surgeons usually thrive on competition to be the best.

Wayne Marler
Clinical Specialist
South Alabama Outpatient Services
Enterprise, Ala.
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Involve your scrub staff
Involve scrub staff with sales reps. Know that procedure packs should be just that, customized to your individual facility's needs. Monitor what is never used in the pack, and delete these items. Shop and review your packs at least annually.

Suzanne Rodenheiser, RN, BSN, CNOR
Clinical Director
Delaware Surgery Center
Dover, Del.
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Packs sans drapes
Use packs without drapes in them. You can then use them for multiple specialties, and drapes are much easier to store than packs. This way you may be able to go with an already-made custom pack and save money.

Dennis Fowler, RN
Purchasing Agent
East Columbus Surgery Center
Columbus, Ohio
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Packs for your top procedures
We sat down with our primary surgeons and looked at their individual supply usage for the top 10 procedures they all perform. Out of this meeting we developed packs that will work for any of our cases. We have four customized packs in our facility. We worked closely with our sales rep to get the best price we could for all the components in the packs. We have also had good luck making modifications to the pack as time goes on.

Karen Gabbert, RN, BSN
Clinical Director
Surgery Center of Kansas
Wichita, Kansas
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Wants versus needs
Every physician wants what he wants, not necessarily what he really needs. When we started our facility, we decided to start with a basic pack and work from that point to the larger packs. Cysto packs, othropedic packs and laparoscopy packs are the only specialty packs we stock. Staff can add and delete to make them physician-specific. A major focus when we started our facility was keep it simple, save space and money, and still give the physicians what they needed and wanted.

Yvonne Campbell, CST
Materials Manager
Winter Haven Ambulatory Surgical Center
Winter Haven, Fla.
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Follow the 90-10 rule
Eliminate anything that's not used 90 percent of the time. It's cheaper to add a product 10 percent of the time if your surgeons use the product occasionally. You must always do a cost evaluation to make sure the cost to add is less than the addition to the pack. Avoid the temptation to put items that the big users need in addition to the items that everyone uses in your surgical packs.