The materials management cycle begins with the use of products in the treatment of patients. RSVP® makes replenishing product stock levels via requisitions easy, fast, and accurate. RSVP® will even generate a recommended requisition based on actual usage or current product stock levels. All of this can be done without the use of a single piece of paper because user departments can requisition supplies directly through the use of a Psion or Percon handheld barcode unit or a PC workstation linked directly to the RSVP® System in materials management. Unofficial inventory is "unofficial" only because doing an inventory in a user area is often difficult and time consuming. With RSVP®, perpetual inventories, or cycle counts can be taken rapidly through the use of a Psion handheld barcode unit. With RSVP® there is really no need to have inventory classified as "unofficial".

RSVP® also knows if the requisitioner is requesting a product beyond normal usage levels and flags the buyer accordingly. If a product which would normally be ordered from a vendor can be provided from overstock in another location within the hospital, RSVP® will tell the buyer, and the buyer can then transfer a product from one location to another without depleting central stores or without having to unnecessarily order additional product from a vendor. This feature maximizes all inventory on-hand and reduces the overall asset investment and therefore the cost of money to carry excess inventory.

RSVP^® gives you maximum flexibility and optimal productivity. How? RSVP^® automates the Purchase Order process by creating suggested purchase orders for products that had been managed one of three ways.

1. Par Level

2. Days Inventory on Hand

3. Economic Order Quantity

The choice is yours on a per product and per location.

Vendor lead time is tracked in the day's inventory on hand and re-order point and economic order quantity calculations on a product by product basis. So, recommended purchase orders are automatically generated and reviewed. Adjustments can be made by exception and manually because there are times when only you know of an unusual situation requiring your intervention. Products may be added to any purchase order "on the fly", so there's no need to go to more than one screen to find information.

The integrity of on-hand inventory is maintained by RSVP^® because inventory levels are updated, based on issues and receipts in real time; so decrementing of on-hand quantities occurs as usage is recorded. RSVP^® also maintains a thirteen month usage history for stock and non-stock products accessible on the product maintenance screen.

Speaking of non-stocks, this is an area often overlooked by materials management systems. RSVP^® has the ability to create customized departmental requisitions and purchase orders for non-stocked products. These non-stock products can be added directly to the database during the ordering process without leaving the purchase order screen. RSVP^® tracks usage information for non-stock products, making it very easy for a materials manager to make the decision as to whether a non-stock product should be made a stock item in any given location.

Assigning purchase order and requisition numbers is always a challenging task. RSVP^® will automatically create an appropriate document number. However, RSVP^® is flexible in that it allows you to manually assign a requisition and purchase order number.

What about those cases when a requisitioner only knows a brief product description and doesn't give the buyer a product number or a source vendor? RSVP^® offers a retrieval method called SuperDex which acts like a master thesaurus. Products are categorized by name, or by product type, down to the lowest common denominator. In other words, if the OR is looking for a 4-O silk suture, but doesn't know the vendor and doesn't know the product number, SuperDex will walk the buyer through the process by first displaying the category "suture", the sub-category "silk" and the sub-category "4-O". After the buyer has gone as far as possible with a description, RSVP® will provide an itemized list of all 4-0 silk sutures identifying all product numbers, and the manufacturers and the distributors providing this very specific product. SuperDex will also provide the latest pricing information including giving the last price paid for each identified SuperDex product from each specific supplier. SuperDex even has the ability to store digital photographs and/or parts diagrams for each product and may be reviewed on-line during the ordering process. Furthermore, just to be sure that a buyer is comparing apples-to-apples for a product within the SuperDex environment, SuperDex will automatically convert to the lowest common unit of measure and price accordingly.

RSVP^® has the ability to automatically receive price catalog updates of price description, unit of measure changes, etc. from vendors in either a proprietary flat file or ANSI X12 format.

Managing the value of products in inventory is extremely important. RSVP^® not only gives you the total value of inventory (based on average cost) for a given location, but it gives you the ability to assign a general ledger account identification number for each product and for each location where a product is used or stored. For example, you can allow one ID for a nurse station usage of a product and another ID for a surgery use of a product.

Productivity and accuracy of products received from vendors is an essential element of the materials management function. RSVP^® helps the receiving department to plan the receipt of orders by assigning due dates for each purchase order. When a due date is assigned, RSVP^® will also automatically flag the purchase order and notify the buyer when the shipment is overdue. The receiving department can automate the receipt of goods in a variety of ways, they can receive by using a portable hand held unit, or on-line with a PC, or they can receive purchase orders line by line or by exception -- in other words, receive exception lines and then receive the balance of a purchase order. Suppose a vendor ships a substitute product in place of an ordered product. RSVP^® can receive that as well and in cases where products are not ordered but are delivered, RSVP^® easily gives the receiver the ability to make on-line adjustments.

To improve productivity, the RSVP^® System keeps track of departmental back orders and issues a picking ticket automatically when supplies are received but before they are moved to storage. This eliminates the need to handle the received product twice. Partial shipments or mis-shipments are managed expeditiously within the RSVP^® System. Once the purchase order is complete, it is flagged as fully received and released to accounting for payment.

RSVP^® includes a full menu of management reports. Each report can be modified to meet a user's needs. In other words, column headings can be changed, order of columns can be changed, subtotaling of a given column can be changed, etc. Users can even create and run their own reports from the report database. All reports are easily accessed from the main menu or from a given screen within the RSVP^® program. And as mentioned earlier, RSVP^® data files may be exported to other applications such as spreadsheets, word processors, other data bases, etc.

Finally, RSVP^® is provided to you by a carefully selected local medical products distributor who is knowledgeable about your specific logistical needs and is operationally and technically equipped to service your medical products and logistical system needs. Your local distributor, as a licensed reseller of RSVP^®, has committed the financial and human resources necessary to fully support the RSVP^® Materials Management System with a highly trained staff of Business Systems Specialists capable of meeting your needs on a local level.