Healthcare Asset Management: Key Benefits
Behind the scenes at every hospital, clinic, and laboratory, there is a team responsible for managing the assets and equipment medical professionals use on a daily basis. Asset management, specifically, involves a high degree of risk and responsibility, particularly when dealing with high-tech equipment used in emergency rooms, diagnostic testing, or high-resolution imagery.
Successful healthcare asset management aims to meet important safety and compliance standards, control costs, and maintain efficacy and efficiency. Without support from a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) solution like LLumin’s CMMS+, this becomes quite a formidable task.
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This article will examine healthcare asset management in terms of importance, benefits, challenges, and best strategies. We will also reveal why maintenance management software can help streamline and optimize your management strategy.
What Is Healthcare Asset Management?
Healthcare asset management involves managing equipment, facilities, and other medical assets throughout their entire lifecycle, from original purchasing and deployment to disposal. This process involves tracking, maintenance, documentation, and upgrades and replacements.
Whether you’re managing diagnostic machines, surgical tools, hospital beds, IV pumps, or other types of medical equipment, an effective asset management plan that upholds strict healthcare compliance standards will be necessary to ensure their safety and functionality. It’s also crucial in reducing costs and improving operational efficiency.
A well-planned healthcare asset management strategy will ultimately ensure that you always have the necessary equipment to support daily operations while enabling your organization to deliver high-quality patient care.
Crucial Healthcare Role
Asset management in healthcare requires continuous risk management. Equipment reliability and availability are paramount when your organization is responsible for providing patient care, and lives are potentially on the line.
Importance of Healthcare Asset Management | |
Patient Safety | Properly maintained equipment reduces risks of malfunctions that could compromise patient outcomes. |
Regulatory Compliance | Healthcare regulations and standards require comprehensive documentation of maintenance and safety checks. |
Cost Control | Asset management and monitoring can help an organization reduce operational costs and avoid unnecessary replacements and maintenance. |
Efficiency | Tracking assets will ensure equipment is available when and where it’s needed, preventing delays in patient care. |
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Benefits of Leveraging Asset Management in Healthcare
For some organizations, a reactive approach to managing equipment and facilities with minimal levels of risk and consequence may be a realistic option, which means that all concerns will be addressed as they occur. However, this approach is not recommended for many healthcare facilities.
Effective asset management in healthcare offers multiple benefits. A preventive management approach supported by the right maintenance management software can help improve ROI, reduce risk, lower costs, and more.
Reduce downtime and improve efficiency with preventive maintenance software.
Improved ROI & Efficiency
Medical equipment and supplies are costly and challenging to track across multiple facilities. A lack of visibility into the location and use of equipment can cause delays in patient care and result in either over- or underutilized equipment.
Using maintenance management software to streamline asset tracking and monitor equipment use can help ensure your equipment is always available where and when it’s needed, is used efficiently, and can give you a better return on your investment (ROI).
Risk Reduction & Patient Care
Highly qualified and trained medical teams require access to medical tools and equipment to perform their jobs daily. Ensuring that equipment remains reliable, high-performing, and accessible will directly impact your medical team’s ability to render care and accurately diagnose and treat patients.
Effective medical asset management will result in better-quality patient health care and lower risks associated with equipment malfunctions and unexpected downtime.
Reduced Operational Costs
Effective asset management in healthcare should enable an organization to make data-driven decisions regarding purchasing, maintaining, upgrading, and disposing of assets, leading to responsible spending and reduced costs.
A CMMS solution, like LLumin’s CMMS+, can provide a high-level overview of your medical assets and facilities, giving decision-makers better control over budgets, identifying areas of inefficiency, reducing waste, and even predicting future demand and outcomes.
Equipment Reliability & Lifespan
Preventive maintenance, which consists of regularly scheduled maintenance and inspections, is a strategy known to improve equipment reliability and extend lifespan. This type of proactive maintenance plays an important role in asset management and can keep medical equipment operating at peak performance for longer periods of time.
However, depending on asset criticality and technological complexity, a more advanced predictive or prescriptive maintenance approach may be needed.
Productivity & Resource Allocation
Having access to the right equipment and resources at the right time and place can directly impact your medical facility’s ability to maintain high productivity levels. An advanced CMMS solution, like LLumin’s CMMS+, can streamline asset tracking, resource allocation, work order creation, inventory management, and more.
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Deployment Challenges
Asset management plays a critical role in the background of many healthcare facilities. However, certain common challenges contribute to a slow or delayed deployment. We’ll discuss these challenges in greater detail below:
- Limited Budgets & Implementation Mismanagement: Budgetary concerns and mismanagement frequently hinder the successful adoption of an asset management system before, during, and after implementation.
- Regulatory & Integration Requirements: The complexity of the healthcare environment, which can include various specialized equipment, each with different regulatory requirements and integration requirements with existing software, systems, and IT infrastructure, can create additional obstacles.
- Resistance to Change: Beyond budgetary and technical challenges, medical teams can resist change due to inadequate training and support and a lack of clear direction and communication about asset management in healthcare. Unfortunately, this can delay the potential gains and ROI it can offer.
Effective Asset Management Strategies
Conducting an inventory audit and risk assessment of all equipment and assets before implementing a new solution or strategy is important. Decision-makers should set clear objectives and goals, understand what support and training they need during and after implementation, and work closely with their software developer to ensure a successful result.
If your CMMS or asset management software provider does not provide adequate customer support, training, and implementation support, you should consider another solution.
Strategies for Effective Asset Management in Healthcare | |
Risk Assessment & Inventory Audit | Conduct regular inventory audits and risk assessments. This process should also include a review of regulatory and compliance requirements for equipment handling, maintenance, IT systems, and data storage. |
Streamlined, Centralized IT Infrastructure | IT sprawl, multiple siloed systems, and manual, paper-based recording and documentation processes are known to limit visibility and create asset management problems over time. An effective asset management strategy aims to create a centralized management system that tracks and monitors your assets from initial purchase to disposal. |
Preventive Maintenance | Preventive maintenance is a proactive maintenance strategy that seeks to prevent mechanical failure and breakdowns before they occur. This requires regularly scheduled maintenance and inspections, which your asset management solution can help streamline. |
Training & Education | A trained staff that’s well-versed on the benefits of asset management in healthcare, your new asset management solution, and the implementation process will be better equipped to support it over the long run. |
Software & Technology | Choosing the right software and technology to support your short and long-term asset management goals is key to getting the best results. Consider CMMS solutions, the Internet of Things (IoT) device technology, machine-level sensors, condition-based monitoring, artificial intelligence, and mobile capabilities, as these technologies represent the latest asset management trends in healthcare. |
How Maintenance Software Can Help
Maintenance and asset management solutions have many of the same features and functionalities. However, they also have important differences in design and scope.
A CMMS solution can enable greater asset tracking control and management of inspections, maintenance, and repairs. It can also provide advanced features like automated work order creation, condition-based monitoring, and predictive analytics.
CMMS Software and Asset Management in Healthcare | ||
Feature/Functionality | CMMS Benefits | Asset Management Benefits |
Asset Tracking | Tracks equipment location, maintenance history, and usage. | Monitors asset life cycle, utilization rates, and depreciation. |
Inspection Scheduling | Automates regular inspection schedules, ensuring compliance with healthcare regulations. | Tracks inspection outcomes and integrates them into asset performance data for long-term planning. |
Work Order Management | Generates, assigns, and tracks maintenance work orders for quick resolution. | Links work orders to overall asset management strategies to optimize resource allocation. |
Preventive Maintenance | Schedules maintenance to reduce unplanned downtime and extend asset life. | Aligns preventive maintenance with overall asset strategy, balancing costs and performance goals. |
Condition-Based Monitoring | Utilizes IoT sensors and alerts to identify issues before failures occur. | Integrates real-time condition data into broader asset performance metrics for informed decision-making. |
Predictive Analytics | Analyzes historical and real-time data to predict and prevent equipment failures. | Supports strategic investment decisions by identifying trends in asset performance and reliability. |
Regulatory Compliance | Ensures all maintenance tasks and inspections are logged for audit readiness. | Tracks compliance-related documentation and integrates it with overall facility management systems. |
Cost Management | Tracks maintenance costs and helps optimize spending through better planning. | Manages total cost of ownership (TCO) for assets, supporting budget planning and resource allocation. |
Integration | Integrates with other healthcare systems like EHRs or inventory management for streamlined workflows. | Consolidates data across systems to provide a unified view of asset performance and utilization. |
User Interface and Accessibility | Offers technicians user-friendly dashboards and mobile accessibility. | Provides intuitive tools for administrators and decision-makers to view high-level asset management insights. |
CMMS vs. Asset Management: What’s Best?
CMMS and asset management solutions provide many features and functionalities, some of which overlap. The options you choose will ultimately depend on your organizational goals and objectives, such as budgetary limitations and maintenance needs.
- Budget Limitations: CMMS and asset management solutions can be expensive, depending on the provider. Higher costs are more likely when looking for a solution that provides a greater range of advanced features. However, off-the-shelf CMMS solutions are generally less expensive than asset management solutions.
- Maintenance Management: If you manage many types of equipment and assets that require regular monitoring, maintenance, and documentation, a CMMS solution can provide greater support.
- Specialized Medical Equipment: If your facility is responsible for specialized and expensive equipment that is costly to maintain and repair, an advanced CMMS solution with condition-based monitoring capabilities could likely provide the extra support you need to prevent unexpected downtime and service delays.
- Compliance and Regulatory Requirements: The specific reporting and documentation requirements your facility needs will ultimately determine whether a CMMS or asset management solution is right for you.
LLumin’s CMMS+ Solution
LLumin’s CMMS+ system offers the advantages of a fully equipped suite of maintenance management features and tools combined with many asset management capabilities. LLumin can help your organization manage various equipment, asset types, and facilities. The platform can be customized to meet your needs during a honed implementation process that includes medical staff training and ongoing support.
Our goal is to get you up and running from day one so that you can experience the advantages of asset management in healthcare and get the best ROI on your investment.
Just a few of the advantages our clients have experienced with our CMMS+ software include:
- Reduction in Unplanned Work Orders = 44%
- Decrease in Mean Time to Repair (MMTR) = 26%
- Increase in Machine Life = Up to 35%
- Reduction in Overall Downtime = 35%
- Maintenance Cost Reduction = 40%
- Migration from Reactive to Proactive Maintenance = 40%
- Staff Cost Reduction = 25%
Getting Started With LLumin
Asset management in healthcare is a foundational component of delivering high-quality patient care while reducing costs associated with maintenance, unplanned downtime, and emergency repairs. With the right tools, technology, and strategies, a healthcare organization can gain greater visibility and control over equipment, assets, and facilities, ultimately leading to better patient outcomes and organizational efficiency.
If you want to learn more about asset management in healthcare and how LLumin’s CMMS+ can provide your teams with the tools, support, and training they need for success, contact us today!
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Karen Rossi is a seasoned operations leader with over 30 years of experience empowering software development teams and managing corporate operations. With a track record of developing and maintaining comprehensive products and services, Karen runs company-wide operations and leads large-scale projects as COO of LLumin.