Surgery Perpetual Inventory

We are going through the exact scenario right now. We are just now getting started on the Cerner/Lawson interface to allow Lawson to "Auto Order" based upon usage in a surgical case. From speaking with our IT team it seems that the report that they have built will auto generate at certain time intervals and then re-order based on the report. Unfortunately for our surgical area and our Par levels it will not work due to the time sensitivity on ordering certain products.

We went through this with PICIS and then Epic Optime, it was decided that they would not be a Lawson inventory location, just build IC12s for the interfaces to find. To handle the paradox of "you don't want inventory; you just want inventory reports" - we wrote a sql to generate the interface to Epic and created massive non-stock pars to generate replenishment reqs.

Not best practice, but evidence that you, too, can survive this.

So you don't have a usage file going to Lawson to decrement you inventory? Do you manually check your non-stock pars for them to create reqs?

We do have all of the OR's setup as Par Locations and use the MSCM handhelds on a daily basis to scan labels and place orders for stock and non-stock items. We also use Cardinal's CIMS 2 bin kanban system in other locations and may move tot hat in the OR's in the future.

We have been talking about doing a Lawson to Cerner interface for roughly 14 years and have started and stopped the project at least 4 times. But this is to send Pricing data to the Charge Master and not to send data back to Lawson for Inventory Control. Our stopping point has always been Cerner's Surginet tool (as I understand it, this is not really widely used in other Cerner shops for Billing) that could only take new item pricing and not updated item pricing. I have heard that they have fixed this but we have not looked into it recently. We have no intention on letting Cerner send any data back to Lawson at this time because our trust in the accuracy of Cerner data is near zero to be honest. Not that conceptually it should not be able to be done though. Good luck on your project and I am sure it can be done.

We have started and stopped our Item Usage interface project with Cerner multiple times as well.  We are back to started now and have noticed that when the file from Cerner is processed in, it creates a bunch of blank IC21 records for the lines that don't exist in our OR IC12 location.  My assumption is that this will cause issues at Month end, year end, etc.  We were told by our Cerner consultant that they couldn't filter the file down to only provide the items we are storing in our IC12 location and that instead, it would pass ALL item usage.  We originally thought this would be OK but now that I see all these blank records on IC21, I feel as though we need to revisit.  Anyone have any ideas how we could work around this without going back to Cerner?? 

Interesting - we are in the same situation and have been for almost 4 years now since our original Lawson to Surginet Item Interface went into production. We have an item interface (custom) that runs Monday through Friday to send Item Data to Surginet. We wanted the Supply Usage to come back in a file where we could use IC500 to update inventory - but Cerner could never get that to work properly because they have no place to store the Par Location to send back to Lawson (is what I've been told) and they could never get the quantities correct either. We are in the process of building our own Order Automation process (for implants only at this time) because nothing delivered in Lawson will work the way the users need it to - but then again, this has so many exceptions to the rule that this has been put back on the shelf for the time being now as well. Cerner/Surginet to me is an extremely fragile and difficult to interface with system and as Maris stated - I have no faith in the data coming from Cerner/Surginet either...

To be completely fair, it's not limited to Cerner. We have EPIC and had the same problem. The consultants wanted us to set up an interface to decrement Lawson based on what was used in the case but that had several flaws.

 

1) We would only get it when the case completely closed, 3 days later which would put us at risk of not having the supplies in the meantime or being overstocked.

2) We have a 28% return rate from what is picked. We couldn't trust that what EPIC thought was coming down was actually coming and not being stockpiled in the room, discarded or otherwise overlooked.

 

At the time of the decision (2011 or so), we had both a perpetual sterile processing (supply picking) and a perpetual operating room inventory.  Now, we've converted SPD to a par cart that is wholly owned by the OR. We do still have the perpetual OR inventory but since the case carts aren't going into their inventory, we don't have to worry about usage of those items.

We also have Omnicells in the rooms and items that are wholly in the OR Inventory are stored there and decremented via interface from Omnicell to Lawson. (Supplies are charged via an interface from Omnicell to EPIC).

 

A long reply just to say....you are not alone. :)

Thanks - sometimes misery truly does love company!  I'm glad this thread was started - maybe some ideas will come up as a result.  Everything that has been said applies to us as well.

So not much sounds like it will "play nice" with Lawson in terms of item usage decrementing.  I have been leary about it because you are trusting a file to come in and automatically decrements and then your inventory be correct and reorder.  Those OR items are obviously important to keep in stock and never run out of so that is a fear of ours is getting the inventory level just right for those situations where items aren't charted and are just taken from the carts.  I was told on another thread that an option could be to use an IPD flow to go to IC21 and delete the "junk" records that the file from Cerner coming in creates.  We do have a Point of Use system that we may be able to utilize instead but I know that will mean additional dollars and another project so that would have to be the last step for us after I've exhausted all of my research.  Do please let me know if you come up with anything else!! I appreciate it!