Improving patient safety and saving money using point-of-care scanning in the NHS (July 2020)

Summary

This report details the experiences of the Scan4Safety demonstrator sites. Six trusts implemented scanning of people, products and places over the two-year initiative, which was funded by the Department of Health and made extensive use of unique identifiers from GS1, a not-for-profit organisation that develops and maintains global standards for business communication.

At these organisations, all patients have a barcode on their wristband which is scanned before a procedure. All equipment used for that procedure is also scanned – including implantable medical devices – and recorded against the patient and the location.

At some trusts, staff even have barcoded badges which are scanned before a procedure so making it possible to identify which teams were identified in which procedures. The result is complete traceability alongside a full understanding of costs, at patient and clinical team level.

Content

Among the results reported by the Scan4Safety demonstrator sites, were:

• the release of 140,000 hours of clinical time back to patient care
• non-recurrent inventory reductions of £9m
• recurrent inventory savings worth nearly £5m across the six trusts.