7 Important Reasons Why Healthcare Facilities Must Implement CMMS
Healthcare facilities include multi-specialty hospitals, rehab centers, and small medical clinics. All of these facilities are slowly becoming more technologically advanced with more of them using Healthcare IT Services to ensure their system is secure and they are compliant with regulations. They contain a lot of medical equipment and confidential patient data that needs to be managed efficiently. There are several challenges that come with running a healthcare facility while upholding high standards. It is a herculean task but it can be made a lot easier and efficient by implementing CMMS.
Here are seven reasons why an EAM system is critical in any healthcare facility:
Helps in Maintaining Asset Performance and Reliability
Healthcare facilities and equipment must operate at their peak performance to ensure patient comfort and staff readiness. When you have CMMS software in place, you will be able to monitor asset performance, initiate preventive maintenance measures, and collect data on all your assets easily.
Having a flexible, customizable and scalable software increases the reliability and life of numerous assets that include lights, HVAC systems, restrooms, parking lots, elevators, etc., apart from medical equipment, operating theaters, patients rooms and ICUs. Preventive maintenance scheduling keeps MRI, X-ray and other medical machines in optimum condition so they are always available for patient care. To ensure that these types of equipment are update to date and maintenance is maintained, companies might look to an external source of support when it comes to keeping their equipment in good working order. Some maintenance companies might find that using field service management software from somewhere like ServiceMax – https://www.servicemax.com/products/field-service-management – could help to keep them on task when it comes to managing, scheduling and dispatching services.
Provides the Complete Picture
Healthcare facilities must keep an eye on all their equipment. Considering the sheer amount of assets present in the facility, it would make it impossible to achieve this task manually. Implementing CMMS would prove to be beneficial as it captures a wealth of accurate data of all the healthcare facility assets. This data provides a complete picture of equipment performance and cost. By analyzing this data, managers get the ability to make informed decisions that reduce costs pertaining to energy use and machine maintenance.
Asset and Facility Safety
An EAM software is designed to support all the health care functions through real-time insights into assets, inventory and equipment maintenance. It helps in supporting the overall healthcare safety and security through asset tracking and machine maintenance. You can conduct safety checks and monitor various assets such as elevator functionality, plumbing repairs, regulation of HVAC systems, food storage equipment, access for disable people, air quality, and machine performance to name a few. CMMS system ensures that the medical staff can focus their efforts on resolving emergencies and other critical issues instead of worrying about equipment and facilities running smoothly.
Compliance and Auditing
Every healthcare facility must adhere to stringent government regulations. The medical equipment needs to be inspected periodically to make sure that it is working accurately and in a compliant manner. The new equipment added to the hospital inventory must be regularly tracked and you must ensure that maintenance procedures are followed.
It is absolutely imperative that the healthcare facility maintains high standards during performance audits. CMMS helps in collating all the necessary information and generating accurate reports for audits through the year. It also enables you to store the required equipment records and PM schedules safely on an easily assessable centralized location. A CMMS does not guarantee compliance, however, implementing it will make compliance far easier to assess and achieve.
Inventory Management
Undoubtedly, there will be numerous assets within the healthcare facility that you need to keep a track of. You need to know where exactly any asset is located and whether it is available at any point or not. CMMS helps with inventory management by letting you know the availability and location of machine parts and other supplies. You can either scan the barcode or enter the serial number to locate an asset in any location. You may want to look into alternatives if your current inventory management system is not working up to the standards set, for example, Sage 50 inventory management software may be the right track to take to keep stock of everything coming in and out.
Work Order Management
Every healthcare facility consists of hundreds of staff members executing a number of tasks at given point of time. It would create panic and confusion amongst the patients and employees alike if there is no one to perform a critical task when required or when scheduling goes wrong. CMMS helps in avoiding such unwanted scenarios by scheduling, dispatching and tracking the work crews and the assignments they have been allocated. It also helps in eliminating overlapping.
Efficient Labor Management
CMMS systems have labor management options that are quite easy to follow and they help in organizing everything – right from planning, delegation, and execution of work orders, completion of tasks to the scheduling of shifts. You can easily manage your employees using CMMS features that are custom made in order to suit specific needs of the healthcare industry. They also come with ready-to-use templates that enable you to implement preventive maintenance tasks while cutting down both time and effort.
It is true that the healthcare industry provides noble services but that doesn’t change the fact that it needs to make profits as any other industry. You need to work at the maximum efficiency in order to stay compliant and competitive. Investing in CMMS will offer a plethora of benefits – streamlined operations, increased profits, enhanced patient experience, saved time while keeping the legal issues, liabilities, and errors at bay.
Lindsey Walker works for NEXGEN Asset Management as their Marketing Manager. With a B.S in Business Information Management, she excels at business development, project management as well as asset management. When she isn’t working or writing, she loves to work out, do puzzles and listen to instrumental music.