In a busy ambulance station, with ambulances constantly coming and going in response to emergency 999 calls, vehicles must be restocked and back on the road as quickly as possible. To enable this, it is vital to have a smooth, streamlined storage area, full of the medical equipment and consumables required on the ambulances. In addition, items need to be easy to monitor and quick to access.
In the high-pressure emergency environment, when there is so much to do and time is always short, managing storage areas can be difficult. This was the challenge that faced South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWASFT) across its network of ambulance stations. Inventory control was an area that was sometimes difficult for ambulance crews to locate and access stock.
Thanks to Medstor, SWASFT now has more streamlined, cost-effective storage procedures in 29 of its sites – stock levels and use-by dates can be monitored more easily and ambulances refilled and ready faster than ever.
Medstor was successful in the bid to provide materials management solutions for SWASFT when the contract went out for tender on the Atamis portal. The first stage was to present trial proposals and quotations for a small number of stations, which could then be rolled out across the entire Trust.
The team at Medstor reviewed the Trust’s needs – to replace the shelving and boxes currently being used for storage and generally improve organisation – and developed a solution built around the HTM 71 cabinets Medstor is known for throughout the healthcare sector.
HTM 71 refers to the modular storage systems recommended in Health Technical Memorandum 71. For this project, a range of full-height cabinets and modular cabinets were selected for each station, each built around Medstor’s unique tray-and-liner system, which allows a large number of consumables to be stored safely and accessed easily, key requirements of the SWASFT project.
As the ambulance stations would, of course, be running as normal throughout the upgrade, the Medstor installations team, used to working in a live environment, had to employ a very systematic approach to the upgrade and refit of the storage areas at each site.
While the cabinets were being fitted, station staff emptied stock from the existing boxes and shelving directly into the Medstor trays, which could then put straight into the Medstor cabinets. This was repeated across the stations as the new materials management solution was rolled out throughout the Trust.
Medstor provided a total of 239 mobile and fixed cabinets fitted with 2,435 trays-and-liners, all designed and manufactured at its own UK headquarters, ensuring consistency of quality and supply.
SWASFT is responsible for the provision of ambulance services across an area of 10,000 square miles, a huge area that represents 20% of mainland England. It not only serves a population of over 5.5 million but also the 23 million people who visit the region every year. The stations are busy places, employing nearly 6,000 mainly clinical and operations staff plus GPs, around 600 volunteers, and over 800 students in training.
Medstor healthcare storage solutions.
The storage solutions Medstor provided for SWASFT are typical of the highly effective products it designs for healthcare facilities throughout the world. Every element of each racking system or cabinet has beautifully simple, clean, sleek lines that not only complement the design of the room or building but also offer increased storage capacity, better cost efficiency through improved stock control, and dramatically enhanced infection
control.
As everything made by Medstor is designed and built in-house in the UK, with some final assembly taking place in the receiving country if products are being exported, quality is controlled from start to finish, with a dedicated team working to guarantee the most successful and aesthetic utilisation of space.
