Every Second Counts: Why Nurses Need Instant Access to Medical Supplies

The Critical Link Between Supply Access and Patient Outcomes

In hospitals, time isn’t just money—it’s survival.

A patient in the ICU crashes. A mother in labor starts hemorrhaging. The care team rushes to intervene—only to waste precious seconds hunting for missing supplies.

It happens more often than you think. Nurses spend roughly an hour per shift searching for essentials, adding up to 6,000 lost nursing hours per year—time that should be spent saving lives, not searching stockrooms.

The cost? Over $25 billion annually wasted on supply chain inefficiencies. But this isn’t just about wasted dollars—it’s about patient safety, overburdened nurses, and care that can’t afford to wait.

Real-World Scenarios: When Every Second Counts

To fully grasp the impact of supply access delays, let’s examine real-world hospital scenarios where inefficient inventory systems have put patients at risk.

Scenario 1: Code Blue in the ICU

A critically ill patient in the ICU goes into cardiac arrest. The rapid response team springs into action, but the nurse assigned to retrieve a life-saving medication struggles to locate the crash cart’s intubation supplies. The designated storage area is disorganized, and a previous shift failed to restock key items. Precious seconds are lost, leading to an extended resuscitation attempt and increased risk of patient mortality.

A real-time supply location tool like AskIris would have instantly pinpointed the exact location of the required supply, reducing retrieval time and increasing the likelihood of a successful intervention.

Scenario 2: Labor and Delivery Emergency

A mother in active labor experiences a sudden postpartum hemorrhage. The obstetric team needs immediate access to blood products and uterotonic medications. However, a mismanaged supply chain leads to a critical shortage of key drugs in the labor and delivery unit. A nurse has to leave the patient’s bedside to search multiple stockrooms, losing critical minutes.

With a centralized supply location system, nurses could have verified stock availability and accessed a nearby alternative within seconds, preventing unnecessary delays and improving maternal outcomes.

Scenario 3: Trauma Bay Bottleneck

A motor vehicle accident victim arrives in the emergency department with severe internal bleeding. A surgical team is prepped, but the nurse assisting the procedure cannot locate the necessary sterile sutures in the trauma bay storage unit. Frantic searches, repeated calls to supply staff, and multiple stockroom trips further delay surgical intervention.

Had an efficient supply location tool been in place, the nurse would have been able to instantly determine the nearest available set of sutures, ensuring a smoother and faster response time.

The Financial, Operational, and Patient Satisfaction Cost of Supply Delays

Beyond the obvious risks to patient care, supply retrieval inefficiencies create significant financial and operational challenges for hospitals. Disorganized inventory management and delayed access to essential supplies contribute to rising costs and decreased efficiency. These issues arise from:

• Unnecessary supply reorders due to misplaced items.

• Overstocking and stockouts, leading to waste and emergency purchasing.

• Increased labor costs from staff searching for essential items instead of focusing on patient care.

• Surgical and procedural delays, which extend hospital stays and slow bed turnover.

Improving supply chain efficiency is essential to reducing waste, lowering costs, and ensuring that medical teams can deliver timely, effective care.

Impact on HCAHPS Scores and Patient Satisfaction

The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey is a key metric in determining patient satisfaction and directly affects hospital reimbursements from CMS. Supply shortages and procedural delays caused by disorganized inventory can negatively impact these scores in several ways:

• Longer wait times for procedures and treatments due to unavailable supplies can result in lower satisfaction scores.

• Increased patient anxiety and dissatisfaction when delays occur in emergency care situations.

• Negative perceptions of hospital efficiency, leading to lower ratings and potential financial penalties.

The Solution: How Ask Iris Ensures Instant Supply Access

Most hospitals rely on inventory management systems, but these platforms often fail in real-world scenarios. Stock counts may be outdated, items are stored in multiple locations, and nurses are left wasting time searching for what should be readily available.

AskIris bridges the gap between inventory tracking and real-time supply access, ensuring hospital staff can instantly locate, restock, and manage critical supplies when and where they’re needed most.

Instant Supply Location Identification

• Nurses can quickly locate supplies across various units, ensuring immediate access during critical moments.

• Hospitals using advanced efficiency solutions like AskIris see 86% less time spent in supply rooms, allowing nurses to focus on patient care instead of searching for inventory.

Reduction in Search Times

• By cutting the time spent searching for supplies, AskIris keeps nurses at the bedside, improving patient safety and care quality.

• Faster retrieval times mean medical emergencies are handled more efficiently, increasing survival rates in critical situations.

• Hospitals with advanced efficiency efforts experience 78% higher nurse retention rates, reducing staff burnout and turnover caused by supply-related frustrations.

Elimination of Stockouts and Overstocking

• Real-time visibility into stock levels prevents shortages and ensures supplies are always available.

• AskIris reduces the time required to replenish stockouts by 45%, minimizing delays that could impact patient care.

• By preventing overordering and reducing supply waste, hospitals can significantly cut costs and optimize their inventory spending.

Improved Hospital Performance Metrics

• Optimizing supply chain workflows leads to better staff efficiency, enabling healthcare professionals to focus on their primary responsibilities.

• Higher HCAHPS scores result in improved patient satisfaction and increased reimbursement incentives.

• Hospitals implementing smarter inventory management see an ROI of over 800%, as supply retrieval becomes 10x faster than manual processes.

The Bottom Line: Hospitals Can’t Afford to Ignore Supply Efficiency

The consequences of delayed supply access extend far beyond inefficiency—they impact patient outcomes, operational costs, nurse well-being, and hospital financial performance. By leveraging a real-time supply location system like AskIris, hospitals can:

• Dramatically reduce response times in emergencies.

• Improve patient safety by ensuring immediate access to critical supplies.

• Optimize hospital workflows and lower operational costs.

• Alleviate nurse burnout by removing the stress of supply retrieval.

• Boost HCAHPS scores and hospital reimbursements.

Supply chain inefficiencies are not just a logistics problem—they are a patient care problem, a financial problem, and a workforce retention problem.

Hospitals that fail to modernize supply access risk falling behind in care quality, operational efficiency, and financial sustainability.

The question isn’t whether hospitals should invest in smarter supply solutions—it’s how soon they can afford to wait.