In our last blog, we began talking a bit about asset management for the healthcare industry. Today, let’s focus on preventative maintenance (PM).
Almost every type of non-consumable hospital equipment requires preventative maintenance. This typically occurs in large, overlapping cycles and necessitates significant time and effort by clinical engineering/biomed personnel. According to a research team from Laval University, each hospital keeps about 15 to 20 pieces of medical equipment for each staffed bed. This equals to an investment of about U.S. $200k-400k annually per bed. In a 500-bed hospital, this can easily add up to more than U.S. $100-200 million worth of medical equipment.
The same studies indicate that annual medical equipment management and maintenance cost to approximately 1% of a hospital’s total budget. Hospitals must ensure that their critical medical devices are accurate, safe, operating correctly and are reliable.
Because much of a hospital’s non-consumable equipment is mobile, finding each asset is the largest struggle. Wasted times and frustrated workers aren’t the only issues that can occur when assets are difficult to find. Lack of visibility of assets can also ultimately affect patient safety.
How much time are your biomed/clinical engineering personnel spending search for healthcare equipment? How could real-time locating capabilities, data collection and RFID help drive the speed and efficiency of your healthcare organization’s approach to locating assets?
If you’re losing time, money and wasting efforts by continually searching for healthcare assets, AbeTech can help. Our solutions help our clients locate what’s missing, what has moved, and which departments are responsible for particular items. AbeTech solutions enable you to track and manage assets throughout your facilities via data collection, RFID and mobile computing.
For more information on how we can help with your healthcare organization’s asset tracking, contact AbeTech today.
