Preventive Maintenance for Medical Equipment: Best Practices

Overseeing advanced equipment used for medical procedures is a sensitive task. Regular maintenance is required to ensure patient safety and to maintain regulatory compliance. When safety and liability are on the line, using the right tools to streamline maintenance, keep proper documentation, and monitor the ongoing performance of medical equipment is critical. 

This article will discuss the importance of preventive maintenance for medical equipment. Whether you’re a medical facility intending to take on the responsibility of maintenance operations, or you’re a third-party company that contracts with medical facilities to keep equipment up and running, using a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) like LLumin’s CMMS+ can help ensure your maintenance strategy is both reliable and effective. 

What Is Preventive Maintenance?

Preventive maintenance (PM) is a proactive maintenance strategy that is defined by regular maintenance inspections, maintenance, and repairs. The process can be time-based or usage-based, and may be fully automated with the use of a CMMS for medical facilities.

Preventive maintenance for medical equipment offers many benefits. The most important include the capacity for early detection of looming mechanical failures, before they degrade into equipment failure. This strategy can prevent unplanned downtime and unexpected equipment failures, identify signs of poorly working equipment, and ensure that your medical facility is always running reliably at peak performance. 

Best Practices for Preventive Maintenance of Medical Equipment

Whether you manage a medical facility’s internal maintenance team or you’re a third-party company tasked with the responsibility of regularly maintaining the equipment, following industry best practices can help ensure your maintenance strategy is highly effective. 

Proactive Maintenance Schedule

Creating and adhering to a proactive maintenance schedule that’s customized for all business-critical equipment and assets is the first step to ensuring a medical facility remains safe and compliant. A preventive maintenance strategy that includes routine inspections, calibration, and servicing based on manufacturer’s recommendations and equipment usage is essential. Making sure that your maintenance schedule remains up-to-date and reflects changes in equipment inventory or usage will also be necessary. 

Use a CMMS Tracking System

A CMMS software like LLumin’s CMMS+ should be used to track all maintenance-related activities, schedule preventive maintenance tasks, and record the results and history of completed work. LLumin can ensure the real-time tracking of equipment performance, identify failure patterns, help your team identify recurring issues, and manage inventory for spare parts and materials. 

Train and Certify Staff

Your maintenance strategy is only as good as the team that supports it. If your technicians lack proper training and certifications, they will not be effective in supporting your preventive maintenance strategy. Because of this, it’s important to provide the necessary technical training to support your medical equipment and to uphold safety and compliance standards. Regular training will also help ensure your maintenance team is continuously improving their skills. 

Regular Calibration and Validation

Managing sensitive medical equipment requires regular calibration, followed by performance validation. This process ensures that medical equipment remains both accurate and reliable. When determining calibration intervals, it is advised to follow manufacturer guidelines and industry standards. In addition, you must carefully document all results of these procedures. 

Comprehensive Documentation

Maintaining accurate and up-to-date documentation is essential for safety and compliance, troubleshooting recurring issues, and ensuring that a maintenance team always has access to historical records. Be sure to keep detailed records of all maintenance activities, including inspections, repairs, and parts replacements. 

Monitor Equipment Performance

Real-time monitoring of equipment performance can help your management team detect failure patterns and potential issues before they become equipment failures. This is called condition-based monitoring and can help identify anomalies indicating the need for swift intervention. 

Regular Risk Assessments

Risk assessments are necessary to identify the potential hazards associated with your facility’s equipment and assets. Make a detailed inventory of all medical equipment to evaluate the likelihood of equipment failure and its potential impact on patient safety and daily operations. Use your risk assessments to prioritize scheduled maintenance and ensure that tasks are determined by criticality and always address high-risk equipment first. 

Vendor Management

If you rely on third-party service providers or you manage a third-party medical equipment maintenance facility, you must ensure that every team member upholds maintenance standards. Effective communication between medical facilities and vendors starts by establishing clear communication channels and setting goals for tracking performance metrics. Scheduling regular meetings can improve communications and ensure that all parties uphold their responsibilities. 

Stay Informed of Industry Changes

No matter how effective your current preventive maintenance strategy seems, it will always require improvements and adjustments based on new industry standards, technological advancements, and regulatory standards. This continual evolution necessitates that you stay updated on new best practices and emergent technology. Staying informed can help ensure your maintenance strategy is effective in keeping medical equipment safe and reliable. 

LLumin’s CMMS+ for Optimal Maintenance

LLumin’s CMMS+ provides several advanced features and tools that can optimize your maintenance strategy. These provide insight into critical equipment and help keep your maintenance teams connected, on-task, and compliant. 

Preventive Maintenance for Medical Equipment
Work Order Management	LLumin collects, analyzes, and stores real-time equipment data. This data is then analyzed and interpreted to provide deep insights into medical equipment performance and infrastructure conditions. It is also used to trigger automated scheduling of preventive maintenance tasks.
Inventory Management	LLumin’s CMMS+ software can help your maintenance management team track necessary parts and materials. It can also help manage vendor relationships and ensure that you always have the right inventory available at the right time.
Preventive Maintenance Scheduling	Preventive maintenance for medical equipment is highly effective at ensuring safe and uninterrupted patient care. LLumin can be used to support preventive maintenance scheduling; it can also support more advanced predictive maintenance schedules that use advanced data analytics to predict equipment failure before they occur.
Reports and Training	LLumin offers a comprehensive set of tools to address the ongoing need to adhere to industry standards and regulations. Whether you must report regularly on your maintenance activities, or you need access to advanced reports for company stakeholders and managers, LLumin can provide the reports you need.

Optimize Your Maintenance Strategy With LLumin

Any organization tasked with the management and upkeep of medical equipment requires careful and comprehensive management. Advanced medical equipment necessitates regular, specialized handling and maintenance, particularly when medical equipment is constantly changing and rotating between facilities. LLumin’s CMMS+ can help any organization overcome the challenges associated with the maintenance of medical equipment and run a highly effective maintenance team. 

Whether you need a centralized platform that ensures 24/7 equipment monitoring and updated maintenance information, or you need to manage a maintenance team to ensure that everyone stays on task and organized, LLumin can help you achieve the results you need to run a safer medical facility today.