Our guests: Les Louden, PharmD, MS, Pharmacy Manager St. Joseph’s Hospital BayCare Health System, and John B. Hertig, PharmD, MS, CPPS, FASHP, FFIP Founder, Hertig Healthcare Advising, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Purdue University.
In this episode, I welcome back Dr. John Hertig along with first-time guest Les Louden from BayCare Health System to discuss their groundbreaking research on controlled substance waste in hospital procedural areas.
Their recent study, “Assessing the Costs of Intravenous Push Waste in Intraoperative Areas Through Observation,” reveals striking findings about both the financial and operational impact of medication waste. We explore how commonly used medications like fentanyl, hydromorphone, morphine, midazolam, and ketamine are routinely wasted in significant quantities.
John and Les discuss how their multi-site study quantified not just product waste but also the substantial “workforce time waste” associated with medication disposal processes. With an estimated $56,557 worth of medication and staff time wasted annually at just the hospitals studied, our conversation examines the practical implications for healthcare systems nationwide.
We also delve into potential solutions, including automated workflows that significantly reduce documentation time, manufacturer considerations for right-sized medication packaging, and the patient safety implications when clinical staff are pulled away from care to witness waste disposal.
Whether you’re a healthcare administrator, pharmacy professional, or clinician, this evidence-based discussion offers valuable insights into an often overlooked aspect of healthcare efficiency and resource management.
Additional resource: https://lnkd.in/gmEm-JPD
Thanks to our sponsor, MIDAS Healthcare Solutions, Inc.
Learn more about V.I.E.W. Waste and Return System: https://zurl.co/Oo9u4
For more information on Drug Diversion mitigation and resources, visit: https://zurl.co/MIMDB
Transcript
Terri
Today’s episode is sponsored by Midas Healthcare Solutions. They are elevating technology to help prevent medication diversion. Key features of their product include real time visual proof of compliant medication disposal powered by machine learning and AI to detect drug wasting behaviors Seamless integration with your adc, EMR and diversion software for efficient reconciliation of waste transactions including identifying outliers anytime witness technology providing flexibility when a witness is required for unused controlled substance disposal and RX intercept for customizable random or targeted sample collection with secure chain of custody welcome back listeners.
Terri
And I want to welcome back John Hertig. When last on the podcast we talked about a workflow time study that John, along with his team of others did on controlled substance waste. And since then he has published another study titled Assessing the Costs of Intravenous Push Waste intraoperative Areas through Observation. Baycare Health System partnered with him in this study. Which brings me to our second guest for today, Les Louden. Les is a pharmacy manager at baycare. So welcome both of you to start us off. John, please recap what the first workflow study looked at and what those findings were.
John
Well, thank you Terry. It’s a pleasure to be back and thank you for the invitation to talk about our latest work. Just as a quick recap, we engaged in this study originally because it was really apparent that we in the health profession aren’t really accounting for the total cost of care, not just the actual cost of the product, but what about the cost of the workforce that’s using that product or audits or time and motion and waste. So were trying to get a better handle at those elements that make up the total cost of care. So in that workforce time study, what we really focused on were controlled substances, specifically morphine, hydromorphone and fentanyl. And we assess not only how much we throw away, and we unfortunately in healthcare throw away a lot.
John
I mean, if you use fentanyl as an example, about 50% of the time we found in that study that we threw away half of a vial and the other 50% of the time we threw away more than half of the vial. So clearly we’re not being great stewards of our controlled substance or other medical resources. But not only are we throwing away the product known as pharmaceutical waste, but we’re also using valuable workforce time, nurses, anesthesiologists, CRNAs to then document the fact that we’re throwing that away. And we know that our workforce time is incredibly valuable as well. So what that study sought to do is quantify the pharmaceutical Waste as well as the workforce time waste. And we found that significant waste exists in our hospital and health systems. That said, those studies primarily looked at nursing time as well as anesthesia time.
John
And if we’re talking about medications, the big gap here is pharmacist time. And we had nothing to really quantify the pharmacist specific time or the pharmacy department specific time that was also involved in utilizing these products. We also wanted to expand the actual investigation of which medications were looking at. So we added midazolam and ketamine. And I’m going to let my colleague Les talk a little bit more about that. And we also wanted to make sure that we expanded to different areas, not only our inpatient, but also our same day surgery and even some pediatrics population. So there was clearly a needed gap to fill, and that’s what I’m really pleased our study did.
Terri
Okay, perfect. Was there any particular reason you selected BayCare Health Systems to partner with you on this, or did they seek you out after your first study? How did that partnership come to be?
John
Well, thank you, Terry. I mean, when we do and when I conduct my research, I want to make sure we’re working with top class health systems. And BayCare is certainly one of those. We also need to work with partners that are great colleagues who we know will get the work done, who have the internal resources to be successful. And baycare really offered a nice opportunity in a varied amount of settings. So not only just one specific inpatient unit, but a lot of different types of care models and care areas. And what that does is help with external validity of the work that we did. Terry.
Terri
Okay. All right. Perfect. All right, Les, you’re up. Please tell us what your study looked at and share what you find. Let’s talk about it.
Les Louden
Absolutely. Well, thank you again. Glad to be here. So Baker was glad to partner with this research because again, it just really helps shed, like as John was saying, onto a different area where we know essentially the or interoperative space is really kind of that dark hole Wild west format. And how can we really describe what’s happening kind of in that avenue? Because sometimes it is surprising where until you do analysis like this, do you really understand the scope of waste and amount? Because, you know, we have tons of data and analytics. We’re looking at the hospital, but sometimes when you kind of get to the details, and especially with making practice decisions and changes, what does that look like?
Les Louden
So this was why we wanted to really understand our opportunity here at our own health system to understand should we be making some changes based on our current setup? So this worked out well with having essentially two different formats where we could analyze because we understand a lot of health systems are in a similar space where they may not have full automation in their interoperative areas. And that primarily relates to having ADC or automated dispensing cabinets in the interoperative rooms. That allows, again, the anesthesiologist to be able to kind of pull meds from that machine and everything’s documented and decremented. Or in the other space where what we had at St.
Les Louden
Joe’s Hospital was where we had essentially a tray format, where again, we’re kind of making those trays in the main pharmacy every evening and replenishing those in the mornings, early mornings before the cases begin so they have a fresh tray. The issue with that is that becomes a little more paper documentation process when it comes down for all the reconciliation that needs to go on from the anesthesiologist to our department. So we had our site at St. Joe’s where I’m at, which is Maine Women’s and Children’s. And so that’s why we had results that were really well rounded for our population. And then we compared that to our, essentially our flagship hospital on the west. So St. Joe’s on the east Morton plant’s on the west Morton plant had a full ADC module. So again, they’ve been doing it for years.
Les Louden
So they have a really process for how their anesthesiologists were using that technology. We had not yet implemented that here. So we thought it was a good time to kind of last time, take a look at how this looks, because we’ve since the study began. But that’s where you can see from our results, we’re in kind of the workflow diagram we have. We were essentially kind of taking this into how long does it take anesthesia to document from a workforce time waste as well as the pharmacy team? And how does that compare from essentially a process where we have all this automation that’s helping us with a lot of the documentation versus a process where it’s not? And how does that differ?
Les Louden
And you can kind of see from our results, so the timeframes that we’re able to kind of construct based off the time study analysis of the anesthesiologist to document on paper for our technicians to go back and reconciliate what they put on paper, Is that correct and accurate versus kind of in the automated process, how long does it take them to kind of Go through those reports. And what do the reports show for the time to document the waste? Cause they’re kind of doing the wasting in those, in the automated dispensing cabinets as well to document that holistically.
Terri
Okay. Yeah, the numbers were pretty big on that time. Do you remember them?
Les Louden
Agreed. Yeah. That’s where again you got everything from. When you look at. Again, I’m kind of taking a look at some of the data here.
Terri
Yeah.
Les Louden
So looking at from more implants perspective, again, over like 116 minutes from time of medication removal to the waste. Again, that kind of relates to the case times and especially essentially that’s kind of the practice. Even though it’s an automated process, they are pulling meds, but likely not going back to waste until the end of the case because they’re kind of moving very quickly. So it’s kind of understood you’re not going to have essentially like real time documentation of the waste. So that kind of shows the time lag, which is validated with the practice that we’re aware of. And then you can also see kind of from the paper documentation there. They don’t have that portion of it. So that’s where from there time to document.
Les Louden
How long does it just take them to even pull out, you know, or even to go into the picture station to document the waste? And that was kind of around 25 seconds or so. So we know it’s fairly quickly to go in and do it, but we know there’s still a time lag for them to be able to go in and do it. Likely at the end of the case when they’ve used all the meds they need to and go in and document that. That kind of compares to the paper process were kind of documenting. Had to watch the anesthesiologist kind of go through their paper report. It would take them generally around 60 seconds or so. But again, they’re also trying to find someone to sign their sheet because they have to have someone kind of sign that they’re appropriately documenting that waste.
Les Louden
And again, that’s again a tough process for them because again, trying to find different anesthesiologists that are available at different times can lead to some of the delays in being able to document that time. And that was a little over a minute it takes them to essentially write down every time. But that’s valuable time because anesthesiologists, you know, are expensive providers. And we would like for them to be doing other activities besides trying to document on paper just the waste activities they’re doing with controlled substances. And then the last part was just our technicians that kind of go back through and do that reconciliation. So some of those were fairly quickly, but kind of took a couple seconds just to go in and validate what was correct or not. And that was just around like nine seconds or so.
Les Louden
But when you total everything up, if we didn’t have this waste to begin with, we wouldn’t need to be doing these processes. So that’s where it kind of gave us a good insight to see does it make sense to have products that we don’t have to even do any of these. We don’t have to document any of the waste. It takes away the time. And that’s where this kind of led to. John, can kind of elaborate a little more why were kind of checking into this whole study analysis and some of the results we saw from that.
John
Yeah, Les, thanks for that and just well put. And I know we accomplished our task and our objective when it comes to the study, but there were also these other learnings in terms of just the stark difference in automation. When we do have automation and when it’s thoughtfully integrated, it does save quite a bit of workforce time and we can’t ignore those savings. And I think the other point here is we need to really stop working in silos when it comes to understanding and implementing total cost of care. Because the decisions that pharmacy department makes and maybe using ready to administer products or matching product with practice for these other units has an impact everywhere, not only on the pharmacy budget, but also on how we use anesthesia time, how we use nursing time, and all that rolls up into one big organizational budget.
John
We need to get much better at communicating the fact that decisions made in one area have a distinct and direct impact on another.
Terri
Yeah, and we’ve talked about that before, how pharmacy has their budget. Right. And it’s goes against pharmacy and their budget. And so they tend to not want to buy those, you know, smaller manufactured things or use the, you know, the separate manufacturers to supply those because it costs more. But then you’ve got the trickle down effect. So as you said, thinking of it more as the whole entity, not just the pharmacy medication budget.
John
You got it, Terry. And in fact, it actually doesn’t cost more. Right. When you actually, when you use all those different factors and when you put it into a cost effectiveness model. Yeah, the ledger price may be more, but really the impact on the organization is. Is more expensive by not making.
Terri
Exactly, exactly. So you don’t want to just look at the pharmacy’s medication budget, you’ve got to do everything else. And the data in here probably could also be used to justify the automated dispensing machines for your provider or EHR charting in your EHR instead of on paper.
John
Yeah, I mean, I’ll certainly want to hear from Les on this, but from my perspective, it’s just as we’re creating this really robust body of evidence, it gives us a lot of ammunition, you know, going into these meetings and being able to try to be thoughtful informing some of the organizational either capital budget decisions or just general pharmacy budget decisions on what products to carry and why. Because it’s not only the cost of the product, but it’s the workforce cost. Plus there’s a whole other diversion conversation which, you know, we didn’t dive deep into. But if you don’t match product with practice and use the smallest necessary dose, that’s more controlled substance flowing around your facility. And then we have the patient safety considerations as well. So what we’re doing here is hopefully creating this robust evidence base to support best practice.
Terri
Right? Yeah, absolutely. And again, you know, it’s wasn’t the purpose of your study, but in terms of automation and not automation, you know what I have found, I’ve got some clients that have the diversion software, but it doesn’t mean anything to them in the or because they’re not charting in the ehr. It’s all paper. So if you look at that time, you know, how does my team get those anesthesia records so that we can then reconcile everything which we shouldn’t have to be doing if it were automated because then the software would be able to do it. Right. So you’ve got somebody’s. Every place does it differently, but somebody’s got to scan all that up so that it can get to us or get to the chart in a timely fashion. And so that’s a whole nother cost when it comes to diversion monitoring.
Terri
That is really wasted because you’ve got the software that does nothing for you now in that space. Yeah, well, and the, you know, the numbers of. So you looked at ketamine, which, my goodness, I mean, it’s so much ketamine waste. Right? I mean, it’s not even close to what they normally use a vial size. And then you’ve got, you know, your midazolams and your lorazepam. Like, don’t you pretty much always waste 1mg of Lorazepam every time you open the vial? Right. So what do either of you have Any theories or insights as to why manufacturers don’t make vial sizes closer to actual dosing?
Les Louden
That’s a great question. I don’t know if there is an exact science to that. I think they’re learning though. And that’s why again, I think having studies like this kind of helps. Again, manufacturers start to understand what are the needs of health systems because again, like you’re saying, it’s spot on. Bedazolam, they either use one or two, you know, same with the fentanyl, they use 50 or 100 mics, like not a lot in between you can see from ours. Ketamine is a good example too where, especially in a patient population where we have pediatrics, they’re going to be using, you know, weight based amounts, even smaller amounts. So but even when you look at our smallest bile size we have available or the concentration they’re looking for, you know, there can be huge amounts of waste.
Les Louden
And again, even with waste, we can see all this physical waste. Right. But that has to go somewhere as well. And that’s where again it leads to. You got to have receptacles for waste and you know, collecting this waste or you’re putting it, you know, because that’s where, you know, we had to move away from putting it down sinks and things of that nature for the environment, which makes sense. But you still have all this physical product waste that exists. So it was really interesting to see some of those, as you’re pointing out, how much average waste we have. And it’d be really nice if we did have again the exact vial size we need because again, we could avoid all this huge amount of waste and it, luckily we’ve started to see trends towards that.
John
Yeah, yeah. Les is spot on and he’s inserted a little teaser into a current study that we’re doing so we can talk about that in a minute. But he’s absolutely right. And we as professionals in the space, I think we have a obligation to push back on manufacturers in a way to say, look, this is what we actually need because if we engage in that collaboration and communication with manufacturers that’s mutually beneficial because we then have less waste as Les is talking about and they, you know, are making something we actually can buy and use. So I think it needs to be more of a dialogue between us and the manufacturers to ensure that product is matching practice because you can see that significant waste. I’m glad you brought up ketamine, particularly in different patient populations. It’s being used a lot More.
John
And you know, the sizes are really large. The other area I think that hospitals and health systems can investigate is more expensive formulations like preservative free. You know, these areas that end up being really expensive. It’s not just the volume but also the specific types of medications used. So it’s another good reason for hospitals to do this study themselves. I’m not saying repeat, you know, all the academic methods, but you know, do an investigation into where your utilization is highest. And are you making the most with our very valuable pharmacy and healthcare resources.
Terri
Right. Yeah. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the clinical space, but yeah, the morphine, the dermorph, preservative free. Isn’t that a pretty large volume and they use like this much of it when they need it.
Les Louden
Exactly, yeah. And that’s the hard part is you just have kind of have to eat all that waste. Right. It’s. And there’s really not a good solution around it, especially when you’re trying to use preservative three items and things of that nature.
Terri
Yeah, interesting. Okay, well, yeah, and I don’t, I mean, lorazepam to me is a no brainer. And I know your study didn’t include that one, but for years it’s like 1 milligram people like, where is our. You would think that would be out by now.
Les Louden
That’s also alluding to a future state. We recognize that one. And so that’s again kind of in our part two efforts to try to really categorize that one as well into the mix. Because I think just as you’re highlighting, I think there’s some obvious ones that are out there that kind of stand out. And that was one that, you know, we don’t necessarily use that one as much in the OR space, but when you’re kind of looking from a totality, that’s where we recognize that was kind of another one we’d like to target in a future study.
Terri
Yeah, things that we know intuitively. But you’re putting it to numbers and really showing how big those numbers are.
John
Yeah, thanks, Terry. That’s exactly right. I mean, none of this is rocket science. Right. What we’re, what we’re doing is we’re adding some academic rigor and doing this in a way that’s, that is creating evidence. But you know, I don’t think we’re uncovering any great secret that isn’t already known in healthcare and pharmacy. We’re just putting some real quantifying numbers to it so that you can then use that to drive decision making. And, you know, perhaps, Terry, if it’s okay with you, since we’ve inserted a couple teasers, would it be all right if I have les talk a little bit about this current study?
Terri
Yeah, absolutely.
Les Louden
So we, like we’re saying we kind of captured part one, right. Which is where we know there’s time that goes into the documentation of everything that has to deal with the waste. Right. Especially in the OR setting. But that’s where we’re trying to take a look now is what is the impact on the pharmacy side? Because we know, okay, we can reconcile everything. But what happens when it doesn’t reconcile correctly? And where does that lead us? Because again, it starts leading into the diversion conversation, documentation, discrepancies. All those things take a lot of extra time and effort to do. So we have to put that through either our diversion analyst software or we’re going through different manual processes to try to backtrack what actually happened.
Les Louden
So that’s where we’re trying to take a holistic look at everything from a large capture perspective, again with the various products, even including lorazepam as a new product to the line, to try to see how much pharmacy time is impacted when we have to go back. All right. When we see there’s unreconciled waste or unreconciled doses, how do we go through the different steps that we go through to review all that information from a pharmacy perspective so should get some insight that it goes beyond just this, where we know there’s physical waste, we know there’s documentation time that has to go in, but what actually happens downstream from the pharmacy perspective, that is even additional time beyond what’s stated here.
Terri
Yeah, yeah, no, that’ll be good. And I think I’ve got your study up here, but you may know it off the top of your head. What? Oh, here I see for the year, just on your meds and in the spaces that you studied, you came up with a waste number of 56,000, 557. Is that the right number? I’m looking at it right here, but I’m not reading the whole paragraph.
John
That’s correct. Just with those few that we studied at daycare and using that yearly extrapolation, and so you can easily see as you add more products or you expand into other areas, these numbers aren’t small and they add up quickly.
Terri
Right. Yeah. And you know, one thing that you just mentioned briefly in the discussion section, is that the time waste calculations measure only the time taken for healthcare staff to travel to document or witness waste, but do not include any time taken to return to previous tasks. And that’s a big, I mean, there’s studies out there, I, I mean, I’ve read them in years past that, you know, when you’re interrupted, how long it takes you to get back into something and in healthcare. And John, you and I have talked about this before and you mentioned it recently just previously in this conversation. It’s a patient safety thing. You know, we are in the middle of caring for a patient and especially when someone comes to ask you to witness.
Terri
If you’re the primary person, you’re, you know, you’re on your workflow and that’s part of, you’re in the middle of doing that. But when somebody says, hey, can you witness this for me? You’ve now taken them away from either something in the chart they were doing or preparing their own medications or something related to patient care. So you’ve disrupted that.
John
You’re exactly right. Yeah. I remember having this discussion with you, Terry, and that is a, it’s a major patient safety concern. And there are a lot of organizations that do discuss the impact of distractions, disruptions on safety in general. And for us, you know, just measuring one way, first of all, that’s a conservative financial analysis, but the other is this idea of the patient safety impact. And beyond that, there is a diversion conversation here. So we didn’t look at that specifically in the study we’re talking about today, but in the previous study we also looked at a 24 hour documentation timeline and where and when most documentation occurs. And what we see along that timeline are two huge spikes in waste documentation for controlled substances. And I asked this as I go across the country, and I’m like, what do you think that means?
John
And there’s like a resounding shift change. You know, it’s when the nurses are doing shift change is when they’re wasting a lot of these controlled substances or documenting it. And so what that means then is a lot of those controlled substances are floating around, you know, until that documentation occurs. So now you get a little concerned about, okay, well, where is it? Who has it? Is there a diversion conversation here? You know, I’m not saying that all these nurses are intentionally diverting, but it does raise that question and it does keep a lot of us up at night that are worried about compliance.
Terri
Right? Yeah. So, I mean, I think most of our listeners get it, but just to kind of go over that waste is such. It’s an easy place to divert because it’s just a clear liquid for the most part. Right. So if somebody has that in their possession for a long time, they have time to manipulate it and take it for themselves. If somebody is witnessing that waste, they don’t really know what they’re witnessing. Right. And it’s also easier to justify for the person who is taking the waste. That’s how many people kind of enter that space of diversion. Well, it’s just going into the trash. I’m not hurting anybody. I’m not taking it from anybody. I’m not really stealing because it’s going into the trash. And so there’s no monetary value that I’m taking from this institution. And so why not?
Terri
And those are all of the things that. That go into play. And, you know, interesting. I’ll add, just recently, something came up with one of the clients that I have that in the OR setting when a anesthesia provider went to waste and asked a nurse to waste with them, the nurse came back with, I’ve been told I can’t help waste anything that’s not in its original packaging. And then it’s like, well, now what am I going to do? Right? Because how often does anesthesia provider have anything in the original packaging that they have left over? And, you know, so that’s a whole another. It’s like, okay, they got to sort that one out.
Terri
But, you know, as people get more and more aware of diversion and how it happens, you know, there’s going to be potentially more pushback that you’ve got to find a practical answer to. But if you don’t have the waste, then, you know, you’ve eliminated part of that problem.
Les Louden
That’s a good point. But we even see this again, just like John was saying, with the time spikes, we see the same thing
again. Like, we saw the results in study, right. Where an automated process, they’re documenting at the end of the procedure. So typically about two hours for those procedures that are happening on average. So it’s the same process, even the automated, whether it’s on the unit or in the. Or, they’re kind of waiting to the end and it’s floating around until it actually happens, you know.
Terri
Right.
Les Louden
With that time lag.
Terri
Yeah, true. And sometimes making its journey into the PACU with them and. Because then it’s a. You have to have it secure. But where do you put it? I’ll just put it in my pocket. Oh, you can’t carry it in your. Well, then what do you want me to do with it? And you know, there’s a lot of stuff involved with that.
Les Louden
Yeah. That leads to things where kits don’t get returned and vials go missing and it’s happened across ors, across America for years. And so.
Terri
Right.
Les Louden
That’s where again, but if they had one product, where it’s one and done, it’s over. Right. There’s no question where the waste went, what you have to do with it. It’s just it stops the process there. And we’re not talking about all these different processes and things downstream that occur.
Terri
Yeah. And you talk about workforce time when you start to try to look for that missing, whatever it’s like, where did it go? I don’t know. That’s, you know, quite a bit of time then goes into that, which doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it can be pretty disruptive. So you’ve talked about this next study that you have coming along. Anything else that you have on the horizon, John, maybe with other institutions or anything related or unrelated?
John
Well, we’re always looking at where are the greatest needs. And so out of each study comes new opportunities to then conduct further research, really in the name of making sure that we’re continuing to provide that evidence to change for the better and change for best practice. And looking at other types of medications and formulations is certainly on the list. Even looking at premix piggybacks versus traditional piggybacks, I mean, you could see that there’s a lot of opportunity here when it comes to healthcare waste. Unfortunately, we waste a lot in healthcare. So the more that we can quantify and drive that conversation to more sustainable, efficient and safe care, that’s where we’ll be in terms of crafting evidence.
Terri
Right. Okay. Yeah. And how, John, the work that you’re doing now, you’re on your own now doing consulting, is that right?
John
Exactly right. Yeah.
Terri
Yeah.
John
Terry. Yeah. I’m very excited to let the listeners know that I’ve gone out and created my own firm, which is Hertig Healthcare Advising. And as part of that firm doing a lot of the same work that I was doing previously. So making sure that we’re using really high quality research to drive an evidence based, supporting best practices, working with a variety of companies as well as organizations and groups to do that, as well as going out and providing continuing education as well as patient safety consulting. So feel free to. Free to Google me, Google the firm Hertig Healthcare Advising and would loveto connect with you.
Terri
Okay. Are you Open to. If people have ideas and things that they’ve always wanted to study but just don’t know how to get it accomplished, is that what you can help them do?
John
I absolutely can. That’s one of my favorite things to do, is how do we identify a problem and then create a real iterative method by which we can solve that problem through either research or advising, consulting, anywhere in between.
Terri
Okay, great. Unless the new study that you’re doing now, when do you anticipate finishing that up? Are you like, knee deep in it or just in the planning stages?
Les Louden
We’ve gotten everything approved and so we’re kind of in process right now. So probably around Q2 is where we’ll kind of have everything wrapped up and we hope to kind of get that out for publication around that time, into that time frame. So coming soon.
Terri
Okay, perfect. Yeah. So we’ll have to meet again soon and hear what you found out. And I’ll put the link to your study, this one that we’ve just talked about, so people can see that. Read that if they haven’t already, and we’ll get that information out. So thank you for the work that you’re doing. I do think that as again, we’ve talked about, we intuitively know that we’re wasting our time and we’ve got a lot of waste and from so many reasons, we want to clean all of that up. And so I’m sure that the other hospitals out there appreciate you guys doing the legwork so that they can just use your numbers and show their leadership. Look what we can save. And. And we’re even bigger, so our number’s bigger. Yeah. Good. Okay. Well, thank you gentlemen, very much for.
Terri
For your time today.
John
Yeah, thank you, Terry. Always appreciate the conversation and the opportunity.
Les Louden
Absolutely appreciate it. Thank you.
Terri
A special thanks to our sponsor, Midas Healthcare Solutions. If you’re attending the Nadi Healthcare Diversion Summit in New Orleans on April 7th and 8th, be sure to stop by their exhibit to discover their innovative technology. Midus offers solutions for med surg areas, procedure suites and pharmacies. Visit www.midashs.com to schedule a demo and learn more about their technology.
