Background to Premium Surgical Kit Development
i. Consolidation of acute-care hospitals due to government medical policy
Consolidation of advanced acute and acute-care hospitals: Estimated results by hospital function in 2025
Source: 5th Expert Panel on the Promotion of Reform Through the Utilization of Medical and Nursing Care Information,
held on June 15, 2015 (Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet)
ii. Labor shortage in hospitals due to the aging of society accompanied with a falling birthrate
Rapid aging of society and falling birthrate → Decline in the working-age population
The aging of society and falling birthrate will advance rapidly and simultaneously, bringing the percentage of elderly
people to 30% in 2025 and 40% in 2060.
2025 issue → Social security costs continuing to increase
The entire baby boomer generation will be over 75 years of age in 2025. Japan will be a super-aged society where one in
every four people will be aged 75 years or older.
What is required of acute-care hospitals in the future?
Placing 2.2 times more doctors for advanced acute-care hospital beds
The working-age population will decrease despite an increase in the number of staff required in acute-care hospitals to
tackle the 2025 issue.
|
Overall picture |
Emergency medical system |
Issues and future vision |
Current status |
Hospital functions are undifferentiated, and doctors are dispersed.
General hospitals have approx. 1,030,000 beds. |
Emergency medical care centers: 210 locations (including ERs)
Number of patients using emergency transportation: Approx. 5 million/year |
With a lack in both doctors and beds, patients are sometimes passed around among hospitals. Doctors are exhausted by
repeating their usual shift and night shift. ERs also lack in their number of emergency doctors, leading to
insufficient treatments and nervous patients. |
After reform |
Emphasize and enhance acute-care hospitals.
Assign 2.2 times more staff including doctors in advanced acute-care hospitals, which have approx. 260,000 beds, when
compared to general hospitals. |
Focus on establishing advanced acute-care hospitals by doubling the number of staff, while doubling emergency medical
systems as well.
Assign several doctors even to nighttime emergency medical facilities and make the system sufficient.
(Example)
ER-type emergency medical care centers: 400 locations; ICUs: 13,000 beds; number of patients using emergency
transportation: Approx. 6.5 million/year |
All patients with serious symptoms will be accepted at an ER-type emergency medical care center within 15 minutes.
Doctors will work on shifts, while systems for nurses will be enhanced as well.
Patients will feel secured. The after-effects of strokes will be halved, and even cases of returning to society at an
early stage will increase.
The ratio of patients that have to use wheelchairs or bedridden patients will decrease. |
Source: Prepared based on materials for the 8th sectional committee meeting on service guarantees (medical, nursing
care, and welfare) of the National Council on Social Security System Reform, held on October 23, 2008
Increase in productivity of 1.6 times necessary for staff in acute-care hospitals
- An enhancement of the system to accept patients will be required for acute-care hospitals in the future. Their mission
will be to provide high-quality medical treatment and to enable patients to leave hospitals and return to local
communities at an early stage.
- The sharing of roles among local hospitals, hub hospitals, and recovery-period hospitals will progress, and cooperation
will be enforced.
Source: 8th sectional committee meeting on service guarantees (medical, nursing care, and welfare) of the National
Council on Social Security System Reform, held on October 23, 2008
Importance of acute-care facilities,
the core of regional medical care
1. Acute-care hospitals
2. Cooperate with local medical care facilities (leader: local core hospital)
3. DPC hospitals
Sound management
Positive efforts
Advantage in performance evaluation
Concentration of patients and surgeries to acute-care hospitals
"Medical safety "and "medical efficiency" will be required more for future hospital management.
Benefits of Using Our Premium Surgical Kit
Enhancing the quality of medical care through improved packaging style
A completely new blister pack style
Conventional kit
Premium Surgical Kit
The blister pack of the Premium Surgical Kit is a transparent & soft plastic container, and being stronger than the
packaging material of the conventional kit, it lowers the risk of damage during storage or removal of the items. In
addition, the blister pack has easy-peel sealing and low-effort opening, contributing to the safe & reliable
preparation of items.
INSIDE-OUT structure: The blister pack edge is rolled toward the outside (unclean side).
This packaging style simplifies the procedure for arranging the instruments.
With conventional kits, instruments are arranged while securing space on a small instrument table, which is a procedure
requiring time and expertise. In contrast, the Premium Surgical Kit supplies are sealed in a blister container. This
solves several problems, and offering a new simplified approach to opening allows staff with little experience to
confidently prepare items in good time.
Premium Surgical Kit: Waste-free, instruments arranged
In the previous kit, the surgical supplies are wrapped in a non-woven fabric, and the kit is first placed at the center
of the instrument table. Then, the fabric is spread across the table and the instruments are arranged. However, as the
supplies already occupy most of the small table, they must be moved to the corners of the table, and then the
instruments are arranged in their correct positions. Along with advances in medical treatment, the number of surgical
supplies has continued to increase, resulting in them being stacked up at the corners of the instrument table.
Inevitably, some will slide outside the clean field, rendering them unusable for the operation.
Open the kit
Move the supplies aside
Arrange and count the instruments
Reduction of preparation time and effective use of the instrument table by changing the opening method
The renovated package means that the Premium Surgical Kit can be handled just like an instrument container, and the
scrub nurse is now able to control the timing of arranging the supplies on the instrument table. Furthermore, as the
rearranging of surgical drapes, the first operative task, has been eliminated, the opening time is considerably
reduced.
As the Premium Surgical Kit supplies can be moved directly onto a clean field during their rearrangement, the
instrument table is no longer cluttered with unneeded items and can be used to the optimum during preparation.
This efficient opening method of the Premium Surgical Kit on average saves as much as eight minutes or about 33% of the
usual opening time.
Example: An institution performing 20 operations per day
2 hr, 40 min/day saved in preparation time About 53 hours saved per month
Preventing a collapse of supplies
With conventional kits, there is frequent shifting whenever an instrument table cover wrapping materials is spread or materials pile up on the edge of a table for placing instruments.
Working while worried about load shift burdens nurses with enormous stress. This stress and waste of materials that fall on the floor can be reduced using blister packaging and Premium Surgical Kit, which packages materials in the order of use.
Conventional kits
Premium Surgical Kit
Can be custom-designed in any order, from draping to setting
Premium Surgical Kits are manufactured and customized to meet the specified requirements of a particular medical
institution and their surgical procedures. In addition to the types and quantities of items to be included, their order
and placement will be in accordance with that institution’s procedures. The blister pack also enables the inclusion of
setting supplies such as aspirators and light handle covers, as well as drapes.
Packing in the draping order means reduced stress;
nurses can better focus on the operation with no worries.
Similar to Premium Surgical Kit, conventional surgical kit products could be packaged according to order to a certain extent. However, an on-site survey revealed that the number of rearranged materials was immense and the order was different. For this reason, nurses had to memorize the order of draping and rearrange items.
The stress of this work falls heavily on nurses, which in turn affects the doctor who is performing surgery. The sense of security from using Premium Surgical Kit, which eliminates the need for memorization or rearrangement, translates into stable surgery.
Via the waste-free preparation and leveling of the same supplies, our Premium Surgical Kit provides an environment that
allows nurses to concentrate on their primary work of patient care and assisting the surgeons.