There are numerous benefits for hospital and service organisations of using an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) solution or Computerised Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS). Find the benefits that will have the greatest impact in your hospital, service, or other healthcare organisation.
1. Asset Registry and Management.
The most recognizable benefit is having a dedicated medical asset management system helps to keep track of all medical devices, inventory, and assets. You can build a detailed asset registry containing data such as model, codes, manufacturer, contracts, warranty, finance, and more.
2. Regulatory Compliance of Medical Equipment
Depending on your location there are various compliance that needs to be followed such as:
- Global medical device nomenclature (GMDN)
- European database on medical devices (EUDAMED)
- European medical device regulation (MDR)
- Unique device identification (UDI)
- Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) may also be beneficial for your organisation.
3. Improved Maintenance and Decreased Downtime
Enables you to get more information for planning maintenance sessions. This EAM & CMMS benefit allows repairs and upgrades to be carried out in quieter periods or prepare for increasing resources to manage the tough periods.
4. Internal Review Benefit
Majority of healthcare organisations require internal review and may request reports related to availability of medical devices, downtime of medical equipment, amount of planned preventive maintenance the coming quarter, amount of unplanned maintenance, and work order turnaround times, only to mention a few.
This information will be used in decision making and investment processes, while being a benefit that will allow clinical engineering to balance and quantify part of their workload.
5. Automatic Preventive Maintenance Scheduling
Preventive maintenance can be scheduled automatically per contract agreements or internal policies. This enables you to get an overview of all the upcoming preventive maintenance jobs and the estimated amount of time needed.
Some CMMS/EAM systems has an added feature that will benefit healthcare organsation by assigning the preventive maintenance tasks automatically to available personnel.
6. Beneficial to Reducing Long-Term Costs
Asset management tools will help you reduce operating costs, repair costs, and other associated costs. At the same time, they will help the accountants to analyse data and improve budgeting forecasts.
With detailed maintenance planning, you can coordinate work orders and inventory. This will lead to cost-saving through economies of scale and bulk buying opportunities of medical assets have proven to work great for your organisation.
7. Ease Localisation of Medical Devices
CMMS/EAM can help staff locate equipment faster. As a result, they will spend less time tracking down the equipment. It can also has the additional benefit of clarifying what equipment has been rented or loaned, and to whom.
8. Timely Reporting per Year, Quarter, or Month
Gain historical insight and breakdown information, which enables you to anticipate service needs for all your assets. Dashboards and reports can be generated by some CMMS/EAM solutions, which will help policymakers and easily quantify workloads for the clinical engineering team.
One of the great functionalities is that you can send monthly, quarterly, and yearly reports automatically to the recipient. This might ease the end of the financial year or quarter.
9. Data-Driven Decision-Making
CMMS/EAM can provide the ability to analyse and report on your healthcare assets, work orders, preventive maintenance, and more. Allowing you to make informed business decisions on asset lifecycles and maintenance with comprehensive data to back it up.
10. Intuitive Work Order Management with Mobile Access
Allows you to access information without returning to a computer, through search or QR scanning. Enables technicians to get the documentation they need and update work orders. Especially useful for organizations with multiple facilities, and for home care.
11. Ease Financial Management in Healthcare
One of the EAM and CMMS benefits is that you will gain an understanding of equipment, work order, and preventive maintenance costs so you can allocate funds appropriately and improve estimated costs for projects.
Larger projects have a high risk and potential for scope creep when it comes to finance. A CMMS or EAM by itself may not be enough. Having a dedicated investment planning and management solutions can help you increase coordination and ease follow-ups. As a result, you will get a better decision-making basis and more efficient capital utilisation.
12. Take Control of Contracts
You may have various service contracts with customers, vendors, and patterns. Contract Management helps you get an overview of all contracts and take control of compliance and spending.
13. Risk Management Benefit
Compared to various other industries, in the healthcare industry it is crucial that all medical equipment, assets, and devices are maintained in an excellent condition to ensure patient safety.
High risk and high device class medical equipment, such as defibrillators and ventilators, must follow strict maintenance procedures. An EAM and CMMS system will support risk management operations with providing comprehensive data and reporting.
14. Integration with External Systems
Remove silos and centeralise information between multiple systems, allowing you only to input it once and enabling each system to perform what it does the best.
For example, two of our EAM solution integrations are with Siemens teamplay Fleet™ and Lyngsos Systems RFID. Our EAM has multiple integration options. Note that some suppliers might not be as liberal in integrating with external solutions.
15. Service Management Benefit
Allow all personnel to easily log issues with the medical devices. A clear and robust issue management system could help technicians to improve their efficiency, productivity, and satisfaction. And functionality could include direct automatic assignment.
16. Maximise Medical Asset Utilisation
Manufacturers are beginning to include IoT sensors into their devices. Real-time data together with historical data from an EAM/CMMS could help extend the life cycle of medical devices. The maximising medical asset utilisation benefit, in short, means extending the usability and availability, while also improving reliability.
17. Preventive Maintenance of Medical Equipment
CMMS and EAM will help healthcare organisations to ensure all medical equipment is being maintained. Through preventive maintenance procedures you will be able to resolve issues before they occur and jeopardize patient safety.
18. Standardise Across Multiple Facilities and Organisations
An CMMS/EAM solution goes beyond just being a system. The system will be the guidance, but the people will drive the change. To gain many of the mentioned benefits there needs to be some coordination between people and standardisation of procedures between teams, organisations, facilities, or even nationwide. In the end a robust solution will be put in place.
19. Improving Data Governance
By enabling systems like an EAM and entering data through standardised fields, you will improve the process of managing the availability, usability, integrity, and security of your data. Effective data governance ensures that your data is trustworthy and consistent. As a result, you will get improved reports
20. Facilitate Construction and Relocation Projects with the Right Tools
Gives medical engineering departments in building and relocation projects the tools they need. A common challenge is dividing how resources are used. Most of the complexity lies in mapping the needs as well as understanding where to place new investments and where existing equipment can be relocated.
What to learn more about construction and relocation projects for medical equipment?
21. Beneficial to Sustained Overall Patient Safety
Ultimately, the goal of healthcare is to provide exceptional care for all patients. Ensure you can sustain your patient safety through properly maintained medical equipment, assets, and devices. At the same time, allowing you to nail down that the medical equipment is available when it is needed. We believe this to be the most important benefit of them all.
Summary
There are numerous benefits for healthcare and service organisations of using an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) or Computerised Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) system. The benefits may differ depending on needs of the healthcare or service organisation. Likewise, different EAM/CMMS suppliers provide different types of functionalities.
Reflex on which benefits may impact your organisation the most. Consider reaching out to the supplier to get a demo of their EAM/CMMS solution to see if it meets your organisational needs.
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