Ideas That Work: Less is More

If you use IV start kits, you might be wasting money with every catheter you place. Our IV start kits contained a number of items we never used, including povidone-iodine prep pads, Tegaderm and gauze. We were amazed when we compared the cost of an IV start kit ($1.80) with the individual cost of the items we actually used from the kit: an alcohol swab, a tourniquet and a single piece of tape (9 ?). We stopped using IV start kits in 2015, a year in which we started 1,762 IVs on patients. In that year alone, we saved $3,013.02 simply by ditching the IV start kits.

Brandi Cunningham, RN, BSN, BA, MHA, MBA
Piedmont Outpatient
Surgery Center
Winston-Salem, N.C.
[email protected]