Ideas That Work: Reduce Paper Logging and Reporting

Practical pearls from your colleagues

Ann M. Cook, BHA, RN, CASC, is director of nursing at The Center for Surgical Care in Florence, Ky., which opened way back in 1988. Even though her center is 37 years old, it’s not stuck in the past. Ms. Cook is always looking for technology that can help streamline its processes.

One area in which she has made a breakthrough is in monitoring temperature and humidity levels in her center’s ORs, sterile core, refrigerators and freezers — something she characterizes as “using technology to pull your reports.”

Staff previously logged these readings manually on paper, which Ms. Cook then needed to sift through. Much like in an old infomercial where someone says “there must be a better way,” Ms. Cook sought one and found it in two sensor-based apps. “A couple devices out there can transmit a report to you so you don’t need to keep a paper log,” she says.

One app uses sensors to monitor the temperature and humidity of the center’s refrigerators and freezers. Ms. Cook can easily pull up the real-time monitoring data it generates on her cell phone. She can also have the app send her logs via email, as well as set alarms for temperature or humidity excursions when a product is stored or transported outside of its recommended range.

The other app does much the same for the center’s ORs, sterile core and sterile supply area.

“I’m sure other people are aware of them, but other administrators I know had no idea these things existed,” she says. OSM