Card Items
We're announcing a new feature called "Card Items" today! This feature works in tandem with your inventory to make your PREFcards easy to update and your inventory easy to manage.
Card items represent a set of equivalent inventory items.
Inventory items are the physical items that you can order and store.
With card items, you'll enter whatever name you want on the PREFcard. Behind the scenes, we'll track the equivalent inventory items for you.
Card items have a name, category, unit of measurement, and reference number. Only the name is required.
Since card items only represent a set of physical inventory items, card item names must be unique.
As part of the release, we have created a card item for every item on any PREFcard in your account. Because card item names are unique, this de-duplicated many of your card items automatically.
Anyone with write access can create, edit, and delete card items.
When you receive a shipment of inventory items, there can be substitutions, upgrades, and replacements. Now, instead of updating individual PREFcards with the new items, or tolerating mismatched data, we track the equivalency information for you, completely automatically.
If you would like to see the equivalency lists for a given card item or inventory item, click the "Inventory Items" or "Card Items" link, respectively when on either inventory page. You can also use this page to manage the equivalency list manually.
One neat feature about these equivalency lists is the "favorite" status. Any inventory item can be a "favorite" equivalent for a card item. A favorite inventory's image and cost will be preferred over all other linked inventory items.
Inventory items still exist and still represent a physical item in your stock room. That said, the following has changed about inventory items.
They are no longer directly listed on PREFcards. You may have a card item and inventory item named exactly the same thing, so it appears that the inventory item is on the PREFcard, but that is not the case. The card item appears on PREFcards, and the inventory item is linked to that card item.
They no longer have category or unit of measurement. Category and unit of measurement have been moved to card item.
Editing a PREFcard will still feel very similar. The UI is actually identical. Instead of searching for inventory items, you'll be searching for card items, but you will still see name, category, reference number, and an image.
The rubber meets the road when you pick a case or record usage for a case. The PREFcard has card items, but scrub techs and nurses pick and record inventory items. While picking or recording, you can scan item barcodes or add them manually.
When you scan, the inventory item will be detected automatically from either your facility's inventory, or our database of medical devices and items. If the inventory item is already associated with an item on the card, the scan will be complete. If not, you will be prompted to associate the inventory item with an item on the card (we save this data so you don't have to do it again).
When you manually add, you'll have to specify both the inventory item that you picked/recorded, as well as the card item it should be associated with.
Besides being simpler and faster, scanning barcodes also warns about expiration dates, tracks serial/lot numbers, and helps accurately maintain your account's inventory.
