5 Ways CMMS Can Improve ROI for Healthcare Workers

When people think of the healthcare industry, they think of the human element — doctors, nurses, patients. But what about the equipment, the facilities and the people who keep them running? This is the hidden realm of hospital equipment and facility management, and it costs hospitals hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. When the maintenance and operation of these assets is inefficient, those costs can increase exponentially. Computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) and enterprise asset management software (EAM) offer a solution to this problem. While it is certainly possible for hospital managers to orchestrate all the maintenance and repair tasks with systems like spreadsheets or work order software, CMMS takes the process to a new level of ease. Not only will this type of business software improve the ROI of your facility in concrete ways, but it will also improve the quality of service you provide to the most important people in your organization — the patients.

Preventive Maintenance

The main perk of a CMMS system is its preventive maintenance features. Preventive maintenance is defined as any kind of routine maintenance that is performed to tune something up even when it isn’t damaged. For example, you get your oil changed every 5,000 miles, not when your engine breaks down. CMMS offers a comprehensive schedule that lets users create asset profiles for each individual piece of equipment or space. Then they can assign specific maintenance tasks to those assets, track whether tasks have been completed, and access a detailed maintenance history of that asset. Users can also set maintenance tasks to repeat at set intervals. This greatly helps reduce the chances of forgetting to perform maintenance through human error. By keeping on top of preventive maintenance in an organized fashion, the chances of unexpected equipment failure is also drastically reduced. This saves you money in the long run by reducing early equipment failure and subsequent replacement which will almost always be costly. You also enhance the safety of your equipment by doing routine maintenance — no one wants to be inside an MRI machine that fails unexpectedly because it was not properly maintained. Beyond the obvious benefit that a safer hospital is a hospital doing its job, this also makes your practice more profitable by mitigating the chances for malpractice suits sparked by faulty machinery. Everyone wins when equipment is kept in the best possible shape.

Corrective Maintenance

Maintenance is performed and executed through work orders, and CMMS streamlines this process in big ways. First, it digitizes the process — technicians simply log in, view the work orders assigned to them and perform their tasks. Once a task has been completed, they can send it along to an admin for approval. This holds workers accountable for the specific tasks they are expected to perform, improves visibility of all tasks in the queue for managers and eliminates the need for micromanagement. Work orders improve ROI by increasing the efficiency of your maintenance crew. Work that is organized can be completed much more quickly. By tracking the amount of work orders in real-time, managers can make decisions about how much staff is required to complete them. This helps prevent over-staffing and under-staffing, saving you money on overtime and man hours.

Inventory and Security Protocols

You know what your facility cannot afford? Fines for improper facility management. CMMS deals with this issue through detailed maintenance records. Healthcare facilities are subject to a huge list of government, health, and safety regulations to ensure their patients’ well-being. CMMS ensures that every piece of equipment, every vent and duct, every room that requires cleaning has an organized record of when maintenance was last performed. That will ensure you are prepared for performance audits, inspections, and other liability issues or for Joint Commission Compliance Reporting. This includes inventory management. Hospitals contain an enormous supply of medications and medical supplies that are easily and frequently abused. CMMS lets managers track inventory movement and restrict access to sensitive substances. If inventory does go missing, it can be discovered quickly and is more likely to be traced back to the offenders. This protects your facility from lawsuits, prevents loss of money on lost products and keeps medical substances off the streets.

A Final Word

CMMS offers a range of maintenance and labor management features that can save you money in surprising ways. From improving your equipment lifespan to streamlining maintenance work, CMMS can enhance every aspect of your facility, inventory, and equipment management. It makes it easier for you to focus on what really matters — treating your patients!