ECRI Institute will hold a webinar titled “Tracking Scopes: Best Practices for Identifying Endoscopes during Cleaning and Patient Use” on Wednesday, September 30, 2015, from 1:00 to 2:00 PM (ET). The session is intended to provide best practices for tracking endoscopes, and will feature speakers from ECRI Institute and from hospitals that have had success in endoscope tracking.

In recent months there have been several reports of patient deaths related to duodenoscopes contaminated with the Superbug carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). The 1-hour web conference is designed to address hospitals’ increased concerns following these events about how best to track their stock of endoscopes to ensure patient safety. According to ECRI, some hospitals currently track endoscopes by etching or labeling the scopes with a unique control number stored in a centralized tracking system. Others apply durable, machine-readable labels or purchase endoscopes with integral RFID chips that can then be tracked with an automated endoscope reprocessor containing a chip reader.

The webinar will allow participants to discuss the various ways to track endoscope use down to the patient level, and identify successes from hospitals and review their methods. The event will feature an interactive Q&A session, and is directed towards risk managers, clinical and biomedical engineers, material managers, OR managers, OR technicians, scope reprocessing staff, and other healthcare professionals.

With advance registration, members of ECRI Institute’s Health Devices System, Health Devices Gold, SELECTplus, PSO, Healthcare Risk Control, and Health Technology Assessment programs will receive access to this webinar at no cost as part of their membership.

To learn more, visit the ECRI website.