When a patient checks into your hospital, they entrust their health and well-being to your clinicians. Throughout their stay, several bags impact patient care. This post will look at a bevy of packets, pouches, kits and sacks your clinicians could use during care.
Patient Belonging Bags
Belonging bags play a role in the overall patient experience. Policies for belonging bags vary from hospital to hospital. For example, you may give a bag to every patient who checks in, or you may bring one to the room for a longer stay. Whether you provide the bags as a complimentary service or charge a fee, belonging bags keep patients’ personal items safe.
Caresfield provides patient belonging bags to several hospitals. Bags are typically either clear or white with space to write the patient’s name and room number. For a more personalized experience, you could consider customizing the bags with your facility’s logo.
For hospitals that have implemented track-and-trace solutions for patient belongings, Caresfield also offers RFID-embedded labels for patient belonging bags — an up-and-coming trend in the industry. This adds an additional layer to patient belonging retention.
Pharmacy Bags
Most hospital patients receive medication. While it would be handy to have each patient pick up each dose at the pharmacy, the reality is that medication is usually prepared in the pharmacy and delivered to patient rooms.
Your pharmacy follows strict regulations to ensure medication is accurately and safely prepared. Afterward, the bag helps get the right medication to the proper patient. Pharmacy bags are designed to prevent leakage or contamination and usually include the patient’s name, medication name, dosage, and other medication information.
These bags may also be used to dispense medication to patients or to store medication orders.
Chemotherapy Transport Bags
Some medications are more hazardous than others. Because staff is at a higher risk transporting chemotherapy drugs, these bags are typically made of heavy-duty materials and designed to prevent leaks, spills, and contamination. They are usually color coded to easily set them apart from other bags in the hospital.
Specimen Bags
Many patients must submit samples for analysis. Specimen bags help ensure samples make it to the right lab to aid in diagnosis. The exact needs for each bag depend on the sample. For example, OSHA requires any containers that store, transport, or ship blood to include a biohazard label1.
Specimen transport or biohazard bags often include absorbent pads to prevent leaks. These bags often come in different colors with checkboxes to help convey information.
Autoclave Bags
Sterile instruments are essential for many medical procedures. When a hospital uses an autoclave sterilization method, items are placed inside bags. Autoclave bags are designed to withstand the high-pressure steam of sterilization and often have color indicators that show sterilization has occurred.
These bags are typically single use. If your facility uses an autoclave sterilization system, you probably already order a high volume.
Finding the Right Products at the Right Price
Now that you know about many of the different types of bags your facility uses, it’s time to look at how much they cost you. Are you ordering on your group purchasing organization (GPO) contract? If not, you may be missing out on potential rebates.
If you are not ordering off your GPO contract, how many vendors are you using? Are you running into any quality or backorder issues? How long has it been since you reviewed quotes from other vendors?
If it’s time to look into a new source or backup provider for bags, consider Caresfield. We are a trusted supplier of labels, gloves, and specimen collection products for hospitals, health systems, and non-acute care facilities. We work with many local and national GPOs and offer free samples of our products. Want to learn more? Contact Caresfield today.
