I've never set foot in your facility, but I bet I know what's going on in the central sterile department. Does the backup of case carts resemble your morning commute? Are reprocessing techs struggling to return perfectly cared-for instruments to ORs where surgeons want to begin cases 5 minutes ago? Is it a constant challenge for techs to clean and sterilize increasingly complex devices? Yeah, thought so. Thankfully, there are new technologies and solutions that can help your hard-working techs turn around instruments quickly and safely.

• Improved washers. There's no shortage of washers designed to fit the efficiency-minded mentality of central sterile departments. The newest models promise to give you more capacity for instruments, better water efficiency and the ability to take on more instruments without adding time.
• Low-temperature sterilization. Previously, ethylene oxide was the method used most often in the low-temperature sterilization of scopes and other delicate instruments. But the growing use of hydrogen peroxide and gas plasma sterilization now lets techs sterilize instruments more quickly than traditional methods. Some low-temperature sterilizers can even sterilize a non-lumened item within a half hour, whereas cycles previously could last for an hour or longer.
• Better biological indicators. When you're sterilizing a load of instruments that includes an implant, which are often included in loaner trays used for joint replacements, you must quarantine those loads until the biological indicator shows that the sterilization cycle was completely effective. The indicators have improved in recent years, with rapid readouts available sooner and sooner. We've gone from being able to know if an instrument set is sterile within 3 to 4 hours of sterilization, to an hour or less, to some indicators even able to tell you within 24 minutes.

Rigid containers decrease dry times, which has instruments ready for use sooner.

• Rigid containers. Placing instruments in rigid sterilization containers before running them through the autoclave eliminates the risk of tears and punctures that can occur in blue wrap, a mishap that necessitates rerunning the instruments through a second sterilization cycle. Some rigid containers also feature filtered vent systems that ensure steam reaches all areas of the container during the sterilization cycle and is dispersed out of the container soon after the cycle ends to significantly decrease dry times, which has instruments ready for use soon after the sterilization cycle is complete.
• Instrument tracking. I consider this technology to be absolutely necessary in today's fast-paced sterile processing departments, whether that's a radio-frequency identification (RFID) or a basic barcode tracking system. Your techs save time and energy in counting instruments and locating specific instrument trays through the system. I predict we'll see stricter requirements in the future for facilities to know what instruments were used in which patients, something that you can get ahead of by implementing instrument tracking software now.

For RFID systems, each instrument receives an RFID tag. As the instrument is brought through the various areas of the sterile processing department, it's automatically tracked by strategically placed RFID sensors. Not only does this help eliminate time spent on scanning individual instruments or sets, but techs know in an instant whether all of the instruments are contained in a set before it is sent out to the OR, eliminating the need to complete count sheets manually.

The benefits of RFID tracking systems can even extend beyond the sterile processing walls. At least one vendor I've spoken with offers technology that lets you equip your ORs with RFID sensing technology, which can be used to help with instrument counts before, during and after surgery.

There are also new systems designed specifically to help your staff track loaner sets. These systems can save you time and money, especially if you're in a facility that manages a high-volume of loaner trays for an ortho-heavy caseload. The scanning technology helps you check in the loaner sets, documenting their arrival with photos, and improves the overall communication between the sterile processing department, the OR and vendors.

Whenever a vendor brings in loaner instruments, they use the kiosk to check in the tray, which logs the time it arrived, which case it's being used in and a photo capturing exactly which items are included in the set. It's also able to capture the instruments' IFUs for your sterile processing staff. Compared with manually logging each tray as it arrives, the loaner management software is a much more efficient option. The platform also provides evidence of exactly what was in a set the vendor brought into the facility if they claim instruments are missing when they come to retrieve it.

Build off the basics

There's a long list of technologies that improve instrument reprocessing, but don't overlook one of the best options you have to speed up the process: inventory management.

If you're using a complicated laparoscopic instrument, but your surgical team knows that they only use 20% to 40% of the instruments in that set, you can save a lot of time and energy by removing the unused items, which reduces the burden on your sterile processing team. Set aside regular inventory reviews to ensure that everything that is included in a tray is actually used on a regular basis. Once you do that, high-tech solutions will be that much more effective. OSM