Why are surgical inventory management systems not more readily implemented? 

More than a couple of people have told me that typical hospitals with multiple room surgery centers lose hundreds of thousands of dollars every year due to inaccurate record keeping of physician preference items. 

Many are using very manual methods of tracking inventory levels, expiration dates, and product recalls using high salary staff.  To put this in perspective, it is a big task to have the correct inventory on hand for a constantly changing usage requirement.  Some inventory is on consignment and most items have critical expiration dates that must be monitored every couple of days. 

So why is it that hospital managers don’t implement inventory management systems similar to what is being done in clothing stores today?  These systems use low cost passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags with handheld scanners to painlessly scan all the items in a full size room in minutes, therefore capturing all the shortages, overstock items, expiration dates, etc.  To watch this in action is almost magical.

So I ask you:

• Do hospital managers know this technology exists?
• Are they afraid to make big improvements because it will point out how much money they have been wasting?
• Do they fear radio frequency interference with with sensitive equipment?
• Do they think large capital expenditures are required?
• Is integration into their Hospital Information System a priority?

Please share your thoughts.  I will be most curious.