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Success Story
Texas Children’s Hospital pharmacy saves millions with RFID medication tracking; cutting waste & stockouts
Texas Children's Hospital looked to eliminate medication delays, shortages, and waste by providing pharmacy staff with real-time inventory visibility, automated counting, and instant drug location tools.
Zebra Success Story: Texas Children's Hospital
Overview: Healthcare Challenge
By equipping its high-dollar satellite pharmacy with the right solutions, the hospital transformed the tedious tagging process into a fast, seamless workflow.
Benefits / Outcomes
- Medication tagging cut from 2 minutes to just 7 seconds
- 99.99% accuracy in cabinet inventory
- $14 million saved on clotting factor medications in one year
- $40 million in previously untracked inventory now visible
About Texas Children's Hospital
Each year, hospitals in the US discard an estimated $3 billion in unused medication, while long-term care facilities throw away another $2 billion, reports The National Conference of State Legislatures. Meanwhile, patients in many regions face drug shortages, sometimes waiting weeks for life-saving medication, even as vital drugs expire on shelves.
This paradox is not about intent, but about broken trust in systems that no longer work. At Texas Children’s Hospital, one of the world’s leading pediatric hospitals, where over 4.9 million patient encounters occur each year, that broken trust became personal. With an annual inventory review, pharmacy staff discovered the increasing variance between the medications that were purchased and those that were administered. "We ran numbers and found $40 million in inventory we couldn't properly track—8–10% of our drug budget," says Gee Mathen, Director of Pharmacy Clinical Applications & Technical Services at Texas Children’s Hospital.
For a hospital where medication access is crucial to both operational efficiency and saving lives, it was a critical finding. Working with Tecsys and Zebra Technologies, Texas Children's co-engineered a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) powered solution that restored visibility, reduced waste, and rebuilt trust in its medication management.
The Challenge
Without real-time tracking, pharmacy technicians spent hours walking between storage areas, counting items and scanning barcodes one by one, then trying to reconcile semi-automated reports that often mismatched quantity on hand. "As pharmacists, our job is ensuring the right drug reaches the right child at exactly the right moment," Mathen reflects. “But ordering based on gut feeling leads to overstocking, expired medications on the shelves, lost revenue, and supply gaps at neighboring pharmacies that may need the drug.”
Robots and automated tools had failed to deliver effective solutions, and existing RFID technology didn't fit the hospital's needs. The turning point came when a supply chain colleague introduced Tecsys, a leading provider of supply chain management software. While the solution was designed for logistics operations, the hospital realized it could be adapted for pharmacy use.
Having also worked with its printers, barcode scanners, and mobile devices, the hospital brought Zebra into the project to provide the critical equipment. “I’ve always trusted Zebra as best-of-breed,” says Mathen. “This felt like a natural extension of tools we already knew and relied on.” Together, the teams co-engineered solutions to help ensure no child ever waited for medication due to inventory gaps.
"We had two RFID myths to debunk," Mathen explains. "That tagging takes too long, and that tags cost too much." The early pilot seemed to prove both points. But instead of walking away, the team refined the approach. "Many vendors sell you something and disappear when it fails," explains Jeffrey Wagner, Vice President of Pharmacy, Respiratory Care & ECMO Services at Texas Children’s Hospital. “ Zebra embedded engineers and executives with our team, iterating on-site until we finalized the solution.” The work at first seemed to confirm the myths, but through hands-on collaboration the system was improved to prove them wrong.
One quick scan tells us if we’re about to run out of any critical medication. Before, we only found out after medications expired. Now we can redistribute medications or adjust orders before shortages impact patients.
The Solution
By equipping its high-dollar satellite pharmacy with Zebra DS9908R hybrid scanners and ZD621R desktop printers, the hospital transformed the tedious tagging process into a fast, seamless workflow. Staff use the scanners to instantly scan each medication’s barcode. Tecsys's solution then connects the data captured with the printers, which generate an RFID label ready to be affixed to every medication worth more than $250. What once took two minutes of a pharmacist’s valuable time per item now takes just seven seconds. The process also shifted tagging from pharmacists to technicians, using tech-check-tech, freeing clinical experts to focus on patient care.
Once items are tagged, they can be located instantly on the shelves with Zebra HC50 mobile computers paired with RFD40 UHF RFID sleds. All of this connects through Tecsys middleware, so product, dose, and location are verified automatically in real time.
To keep this high-dollar satellite pharmacy cost-effective, the hospital also introduced Zebra reusable RFID tags tucked inside 3D-printed boxes. Each box holds the RFID tag along with the medication, creating a self-contained unit with much higher read rates than traditional solutions, even for liquid medication. “Drug manufacturers won’t take back returns if the label is scratched, peeled, or damaged during handling,” Mathen explains. “By placing tags inside the 3D boxes, we shield them, avoid waste, and protect high-dollar products.”
The Zebra Difference: Outcome and Benefits
Now, instead of spending hours scanning barcodes one by one, technicians walk into a storage area, wave the RFD40 sled, and instantly capture every tagged medication. “The sled is something out of science-fiction movies,” Mathen says. “Simply point it, and you can immediately see what’s there, what’s missing, and what’s close to expiration.” Refrigerators and cabinets, sourced from Terso Solutions, count automatically whenever doors open or close, and real-time dashboards on the HC50 devices give pharmacy staff a clear picture of inventory across all hospital locations.
Unlike traditional barcodes, the RFID tags carry comprehensive medication data—drug name, lot number, quantity, location, expiration date, and days until expiration. “One quick scan tells us if we’re about to run out of any critical medication,” says Wagner. “Before, we only found out after medications expired. Now we can redistribute medications or adjust orders before shortages impact patients.”
Technicians who once dreaded manual inventory days now work with confidence, backed by the 100% improvement in visibility at the hospital, according to Mathen. The financial impact has also been significant: “We’ve spent $14 million less on clotting factor medications compared to last year,” Mathen reports. “By being able to detect expiring medication and preventing their loss or misplacement, we can use every vial efficiently and give patients the treatments they need while buying less.”
The success extends far beyond Texas Children's walls. The hospital now works with seven other children's hospitals, sharing inventory data for pediatric cancer drugs. When one hospital faces shortages, it can redirect medications where they're needed most. "Everybody can say they know where their drugs are. But we can actually show you," Wagner confirms.
But this is not the endgame, and innovation continues. The hospital is eager to roll out Zebra’s next generation of smart tags, designed to help make medication management safer and faster. These include temperature-sensitive tags that turn red when drugs get warm after sitting outside the fridge for too long and RFID lighting tags that illuminate on command. “When you need to find one specific vial to save a child’s life, having it light up is absolutely revolutionary,” says Mathen. “We can’t wait to put that in action.”
All these advances come from the same foundation that made the original RFID project successful. “Without the trifecta of our operational knowledge, Tecsys's software and Zebra's hardware, we wouldn’t be as successful as we are today,” Mathen reflects. Together, they’ve built a system where trust translates into action: every medication is tracked, patients receive timely treatment, and no child waits for life-saving drugs.
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