While healthcare is a patient-driven industry, the infrastructure needed to support one of the largest sectors in North America requires its own unique system of management, from the organizational level and on to the upkeep of critical facilities like hospitals and testing centers.
Emergency rooms and smaller doctors' offices use expensive and essential assets, such as medical equipment, diagnostic and other machines. Proper management and maintenance of these assets using a digital asset management solution is crucial for patient safety, as well as accurate diagnosis and treatment.
This is where healthcare enterprise asset management software (EAM) comes in: It’s a comprehensive system designed to facilitate the management of an organization’s assets and equipment by tracking performance, associated costs and maintenance needs.
While some industries still can manage their EAM needs manually with paper records or office productivity tools like spreadsheets, in larger facilities like hospitals or long-term care facilities, a digital asset management solution offers a more accurate and comprehensive mode of record keeping and maintenance deployment.
Healthcare Enterprise Asset Management Software Keeps Facilities Running Smoothly
Asset management tools are designed to optimize the utilization of physical assets in a facility, including machines, equipment and inventory to maximize efficiency and quality while reducing costs. A key piece of this is maintaining accurate records on lifecycle and usage history so that preparing for necessary repairs or replacements doesn’t strain an organization’s budget or workload.
In healthcare facilities, a digital asset management system allows administrators access to real-time asset data visibility for each critical part of the hospital. This is important for all types of healthcare providers, such as trauma centers and other specialty care facilities.
If you offer three MRI machines in your facility, but one of them suddenly goes offline for unexpected maintenance, that creates issues with scheduling and capacity. Outpatient scans will get pushed out to make room for immediate needs, and physicians will have to wait even longer to get data and make treatment plans for their patients.
If you knew ahead of time that a particular machine was going offline for maintenance because you had immediate access to asset utilization data, you could that to your referral partners and they could decide the best action for patients. Even better, you wouldn’t lose any referrals because you could schedule off-hours preventative maintenance and not miss a beat in your patient care.
Streamlining and automating asset tracking with enterprise asset management software also improves staff productivity and response times, creating a workflow that allows staff and assets together to improve the care cycle.
Healthcare Enterprise Asset Management Software Ensures Patient Safety
Creating a more efficient workflow and access to real-time asset utilization and lifecycle data helps guarantee that critical medical equipment is available when needed, properly maintained and functioning correctly. This drives accurate results and effective testing, which leads to more informed patient care decisions.
Monitoring tools give nurses and other practitioners immediate feedback on patients’ vital stats so that providers can make real-time adjustments and decisions on medications, procedural needs and other actions that directly affect patients. They need to be able to trust that the information the monitoring tools provide is accurate and trustworthy.
Patient safety is also of concern when performing potentially invasive testing. X-ray machines and other imaging tools expose patients to a level of radiation exposure, so ensuring they are working properly and are regularly maintained promotes long-term patient safety.
Efficient healthcare asset management through digital software tools creates workflows that trigger and track regular equipment inspections, preventive maintenance scheduling and prompt repairs to minimize the risk of equipment failure or malfunctions that could compromise patient safety.
Healthcare Enterprise Asset Management Software Helps Facilities Remain Compliant
Healthcare providers are accountable to a variety of private, state and federal agencies and governing bodies. Healthcare enterprise asset management allows hospitals, clinics to comply with regulatory requirements, track certification status and maintain accurate records for audits.
EAM also provides valuable data and analytics that can help hospitals and clinics make informed decisions regarding asset allocation, replacement and investment. If healthcare facilities need to shift on a dime to, say, impose mask mandates or enforce temperature checks upon entering the building, the right integrations with your EAM software will help keep these care centers within regulations with minimal disruption to patient care.
Healthcare Enterprise Asset Management EAM Software Optimizes Hospital Asset Costs
The adoption of digital tools in hospital maintenance is growing, with the effective use of Internet of Things (IoT) healthcare technologies primed to help save over $300 billion in the United States alone. The U.S. healthcare industry invested more than $11 billion in cloud-based technologies in 2020, a 33 percent increase from the previous year.
Data-driven decision-making using tools like digital asset management helps hospitals identify trends, patterns and areas in their facilities that require improvement. Administrators can make more accurate choices in managing the levels of inventory like supplies and large assets, as well as capital planning decisions for replacing or repairing major assets. This lends itself to better use of financial and staff resources.
Enterprise asset management (EAM) tools help manage key tasks such as tracking compliance budgeting, preventive maintenance scheduling, and work order management, all designed to streamline maintenance within healthcare facilities’ high-pressure environments.
Narrow Your Search for Enterprise Asset Management Software Vendors
While many digital maintenance management tools exist, asset management software that includes features designed specifically for the healthcare industry helps facilities stay compliant, keep critical assets functioning properly and minimize distractions due to worn-down equipment so more patients are seen and treated.
Maintenance Care’s enterprise asset management (EAM) software offers a suite of tools designed to keep your facility in top condition so you can keep your patients on track toward recovery. Schedule a guided demo to learn more about our solutions.
.svg){kind=small}