Clayton County Fire and Emergency Service is a combination fire and EMS all-hazards department consisting of fire and emergency medical services, plus an emergency management agency. We have 14 fire stations and 367 employees. We use Operative IQ for a multitude of things, the biggest being EMS soft supply and pharmaceutical management. This probably covers about 70 percent of what we use the system for; the remaining 30 percent deals with fire equipment supply management, EMA supply and equipment management, and questionnaires. Reporting, vehicle checks, and anything else from a logistical standpoint are all funneled through Operative IQ in some way.

Before Operative IQ, we had a different program in place. The biggest thing it did not do that Operative IQ does was receive supplies in, put them on the shelf, issue them to a unit and track its usage. Operative IQ gave me the ability to track supplies from the time I order it and issue it to the time it is used on a patient, then ordered and replaced again.

In the calendar year for 2012 we saw a 42 percent reduction of on hand stock. This equates to a savings of roughly $57,000 per year from on hand stock. We make four supply orders each year. If I run a report for the inventory usage for October through December, Operative IQ gives me the ability to see what we used in those three months. I can take that data and see that there was a 6 percent volume increase for inventory. Then I bump everything up by 10 percent when ordering inventory to account for a call volume increase. The reporting feature also allows us to reduce our on hand stock to avoid wasting inventory.

Reporting in particular has saved us a lot of time. The ability to build reports, preset them to gather data, and be able to email them to certain people on a daily basis is very helpful. Questionnaires can immediately notify staff about an issue or situation that needs attention.

Our original budget for EMS supplies for 12 months used to be $250,000 per year. Operative IQ has dropped it to $190,000 per year. The savings we’ve seen have allowed us to reduce our operating budget as it pertains to both EMS and fire.

It’s been a great experience from a customer service standpoint and I’m extremely pleased with everything.

Tim Sweat
Clayton County Fire and Emergency Services
Deputy Chief EMA Logistics