Transforming hospital care and saving resources with single-use endoscopes

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(Courtesy of Ambu)

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Switching to single-use equipment liberates front-line clinical time, improves staff conditions and saves money.

Hospitals around the world are struggling with staff shortages and burnout from demanding schedules and the stress of dealing with backlogs from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Massive absence rates have been reported globally, with the WHO and the European Public Service Union warning that understaffing and “severe burnout” was widespread across hospitals and healthcare settings.

“All across the NHS, widespread workforce shortages and staff burnout are taking their toll on hardworking, but overstretched professionals under sustained pressure,” said a report from the British Medical Journal.

Clinical staff are facing even greater demands on their time as they are challenged to provide high-quality care, while depleted hospitals are struggling to meet their targets on patient outcomes and budgets.

But, as hospital managers and procurement departments hunt out extra efficiencies and savings, an innovative solution through the deployment of single-use endoscopes can help streamline a critical area of hospital performance, liberate clinical time and generate savings.

The everyday standard of care protocol in hospitals is often to employ reusable endoscopes that require repeated, slow and labour-intensive reprocessing procedures. They have been identified as a choke point because each recycling process takes an hour on average, with the manual tasks involved taking nurses away from front line duties.

When staff time at a premium, nurses have to leave patient care to reprocess endoscopes and, because the automated process involves the use of chemicals and detergents, they have to expend time putting on protective clothing for that specific task and then removing it before being able to return to clinical duties.

Single-use endoscopes remove the reprocessing burden so that staff can concentrate on clinical tasks. And research has shown that switching to single-use endoscopes can increase efficiencies in patient flow and throughput.

A study of 800,000 patients showed that post-ERCP pancreatitis was 60 per cent lower with a single-use duodenoscope compared with a reusable duodenoscope. This underscores the ability to decrease hospital occupancy and have fewer readmissions, which present major challenges for hospitals.

(Courtesy of Ambu)

“Cleaning and reprocessing reusable endoscopes, which involves several manual steps, takes a lot of time out of busy, pressurised schedules and is a drain on a hospital’s resources and capacity“ says Bassel Rifai, EVP, Chief Marketing Officer and President APAC & EMEA for Danish medical device company Ambu. More than one million of Ambu’s single-use endoscopes are used across a wide range of clinical areas – including urology, pulmonology, ENT and GI – every year in hospitals around the world.

Critical research and micro-costing evaluations clearly demonstrate cost efficiencies and improvements to clinical workflow when staff are not burdened by the constant need to reprocess equipment. The availability of single-use endoscopes helps minimise the risk of procedure delays and cancellations. Furthermore, single-use endoscope solutions are straightforward to integrate into existing systems, can easily be taken around the hospital by staff and require minimal or no training.

Cost comparison research for rhinolaryngoscopes identified a 35 per cent saving per procedure from switching from a reusable ENT scope to a single-use ENT scope.

Further research into guided percutaneous dilational tracheostomy (PDT) concluded that “significant savings can be made by using single-use bronchoscopes to guide PDT in preference to reusable bronchoscopes.”

“Single-use endoscopes can be used with no compromise to the quality of procedure and, in many cases, they will be more readily available than the fleet of endoscopes that every hospital keeps which, when pressed into service, will need repeated reprocessing before use,” says Rifai.

“The savings vary depending on the endoscope, but they add up to a huge amount when taken across an entire hospital every year,” Rifai adds. “This is a cost that could be taken out of the budget to free both resources and time.”

The risk of infection varies between the different reusable endoscopes but there is evidence that infection could be present in around 1 per cent of reusable endoscopes. Any infection risk is too high, but that jeopardy is eliminated with single-use endoscopes.

Hospitals are also working hard towards sustainability and experts highlight that processing reusable endoscopes features several cleaning accessories that are single-use, consumes large amounts of water and uses chemicals and detergents, placing extra strain on costs, time and green performance.

A recent study showed that single-use endoscopes had a smaller environmental footprint: the Ambu aScope 4 Cysto has a 2.1Kg CO2 impact, compared with 3.1Kg CO2 for a reusable cystoscope.

“With our endoscopes being single-use, it is only natural to question the environmental impact of our products. We are aware of this concern, and Ambu is committed to sustainability and has a robust environmental programme,” says Casper Venbjerg Hansen, Senior Director, Sustainability, Risk & Compliance. “We are constantly examining our processes and looking at ways to reduce our carbon footprint via use of renewable materials such as bioplastics and recycling partnerships.

“We share the values and aims of procurement teams pushing for more sustainable practices and circular solutions in healthcare plastics.”

The company is the world’s largest supplier of single-use endoscopes and has achieved a plastic-neutral profile in EMEA and Latin America by working with the ethical organisation Plastic Bank, and has succeeded in making its products 100 per cent phthalate-free.

“Ambu has more than 85 years of heritage built on innovation and a DNA of constantly improving products and responding to needs and demands for the good of healthcare and for the good of the planet,” says Rifai. “Our aim is to provide the best technology that improves outcomes for patients, enhances the work of clinical staff and creates efficiencies for hospitals with a strong focus on sustainability.”

To find out more on how single-use endoscopes can benefit your hospital please visit ambu.com.

Originally published on Business Reporter