CHERRY HILL, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--“Preventing unintended retained foreign objects (URFOs)", Sentinel Event Alert, issued by the Joint Commission on October 17th, 2013 evaluates the devastating effects of retained surgical items left behind within patients, the correlating costs, root cause analysis, and provides preventative recommendations for healthcare professionals and organizations.
The most common forms of objects left behind include sponges, needles, and instruments. The Sentinel Event Alert Issue can be reviewed: http://www.jointcommission.org/sea_issue_51/.
URFO occurrences not only put the patient at harm, but result in estimated medical and liability costs of $200,000 or more per incident. In addition, from a time span ranging from 2005 to 2012, there were 772 URFO incidents and 16 deaths due to such incidents.
Key factors contributing to the root cause of URFOs reported to the Joint Commission include: lack of policies and procedures, inability to adhere to existing policies and procedures, poor communication with physicians, and the failure of staff to communicate relevant patient information, and lack of staff education.
According to the Sentinel Event Alert 51, recommendations for prevention of URFO incidents include improved perioperative guidelines and processes, increased staff communication, and the usage of “assistive technologies, including radio frequency identification (RFID) systems to aid in counting and detection.”
“The Sentinel Event Alert by the Joint Commission provides increased visibility to the problem of Retained Surgical Sponges and Instruments. Haldor can help hospitals to prevent URFOs and improve patient safety and clinical outcomes, and reduce medical and liability costs through our unique industry leading RFID enabled surgical instrument and sponge management solution,” said Rubi Halberthal, Haldor’s President and CEO.
Haldor Advanced Technologies’ innovative surgical instrument and sponge management solution, ORLocate® empowers hospitals to improve patient safety by managing the prevention of retained surgical items and infection control, reducing costs associated to surgical instrument shrinkage in both operating rooms and sterile processing departments, and increasing staff productivity by improving cross departmental communication and by eliminating manual counting procedures with accurate sponge and instrument level management.
About Haldor Advanced Technologies
Haldor is a privately held company with a vision to utilize RFID to improve the healthcare industry. ORLocate®, our flagship product, is a surgical item tracking solution designed to improve patient safety, reduce costs, and improve operational efficiencies in operating rooms and sterile processing departments. ORLocate® is the only commercially available solution that monitors and tracks surgical instruments and consumables, including sponges on an individual basis before, during and at the conclusion of a surgical procedure. ORLocate® provides advanced inventory tracking and asset and lifecycle management of surgical instruments. Headquartered in Hod Hasharon, Israel, Haldor has offices in Europe, the Middle East, and North America.
Haldor is ISO 13485 Certified and FDA cleared. ORLocate is CE approved and UDI ready.
For more information: www.haldor-tech.com.
