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Reading Marked Codes on Surgical Instruments

The Need for Surgical Instrument Tracking

Current NHS Estates regulations require hospitals to track surgical instruments to tray level. However, identifying and tracking each individual instrument uniquely offers significant benefits.

The NHS are shortly expected to require hospitals to track individual instruments.

The benefits are:

1) Traceability of Instruments to Patients to improve Infection Control
Tray level tracking does not allow a link from a specific instrument or set of instruments to a patient over time. Single instrument tracking enables decontamination data and patient use to be associated with each instrument to improve infection control. For example, to enable recall or destruction after high risk procedures such as those involving CJD patients, or where there is a process failure in decontamination.

2) Accurate and Fast Instrument Identification
Supplementary instrument identification can be time consuming and require experienced specialist operators. Incorrect packing of supplementary instruments may lead to operation delays or cancellation.

3) Asset Management
Hopitals may hold large inventories of instruments, in some instances over 100,000 units with an asset value of several million pounds. Instruments may be bought from many sources with new manufacturers offering lower cost items. Unique tracking enables lifetime costs to be understood and efficiently managed.

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