Any asset-intensive industry, especially the healthcare sector, faces several dangers due to a lack of asset management. When using old systems or controlling equipment with spreadsheets, risks are more likely to develop. Having the correct tools in place to help preserve and manage your healthcare assets, on the other hand, is the ideal option.
When it comes to asset visibility, a specialised asset management system is the way to go. An Asset Management Software like LocoNav, among other things, allows you to get the most out of your equipment and machinery by identifying risks and lowering costs.
In this blog, we will discuss the benefits of healthcare asset management.
What does Asset Management Mean for Healthcare Providers?
Healthcare asset management is a highly methodical and cost-effective approach for planning, purchasing, managing, operating, and disposing of any healthcare organization’s machinery, equipment, and physical assets.
Healthcare asset management is vital in ensuring that critical equipment at a hospital is well-maintained, tested, and in reliable working order at all times. Most commonly, however, there are several instances of operational inefficiencies resulting in major medical effects for the patients involved due to a lack of a competent hospital asset management plan.
How does Healthcare Asset Management Work?
While the healthcare industry has a variety of assets to be dealt with, the main ones that need asset management are emergency dispatch vehicles, fleet vehicles carrying pharmaceuticals, and medical equipment manufacturers. Let us look at each one of these in detail:
- Emergency Dispatch Vehicles
To ensure the smooth running of hospital operations, the healthcare industry must invest in asset management for emergency dispatch vehicles. These include ambulances, police vehicles, and fire trucks.
By tracking your ambulance fleet, you can ensure that emergency services are provided on time to those in need. You can also use asset management systems such as LocoNav and use its Route Optimization feature to make sure your ambulance is following the best route possible.
As for police vehicles and fire trucks, your hospital facility can be better prepared for incoming trauma cases if those vehicles are being tracked. As it is well established, in cases of emergency time is of the utmost importance.
- Pharmaceuticals
It is essential for hospitals to always be stocked with the necessary pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. Gloves, gowns, syringes, and the list of essential medical supplies go on and on. By deploying a healthcare asset management system such as LocoNav, you can track your pharma and medical supply deliveries.
Other than the obvious tracking benefit, by using LocoNav’s trip reports, you can analyse the average delivery durations, which will allow you to better forecast the supply and demand lag. You can also geofence certain areas where your precious cargo might be at a risk for theft.
It is also important for these supplies to be delivered in a tamper-proof vehicle. eLocks and cargo hold monitoring can help in ensuring pristine quality, which is absolutely essential. Most medicines are required to be transported in temperature-sensitive containers. Temperature monitoring for fleet vehicles is an ideal solution for this requirement.
- Medical Equipment Manufacturers
Medical machinery is the cornerstone of modern medicine. To run an effective healthcare facility, stakeholders must invest in healthcare asset management to make sure all machines are in perfect health. It will also ascertain that these machines are subjected to regular maintenance activities to receive the most accurate results.
What are the Healthcare Industry Challenges?
We will now highlight 3 major issues that the healthcare industry suffers as a result of inefficient healthcare asset management:
- Medical Devices: There are various pricey pieces of equipment that are incredibly important in ensuring the greatest quality of care for patients in a medical facility. When these machines and devices cease to function or are misplaced/lost, effective treatment of these patients is hampered.
- High Working Costs: Hospitals that do not have strict asset management systems face large financial losses as a result of the necessity to replace malfunctioning machinery.
- Exhaustive Maintenance: The practice of manually keeping track of hospital inventory using simple software such as Excel, white paper records, or antiquated database systems is inefficient and leaves room for error.
How does an Asset Management Strategy Enhance the Quality of Healthcare?
Healthcare asset management enables service providers to improve their operations and resource utilization in a variety of ways. Among them are:
- Increase Staff Productivity
A healthcare asset management system can assist personnel in quickly locating equipment. That is, they are spending less time looking for the tools they require. Another advantage in terms of productivity is that maintenance can be scheduled. This reduces disruption and permits repairs or improvements to be completed at quieter times.
- Gain Actionable Insights with Healthcare Asset Reporting
A healthcare asset management software helps to evaluate, monitor, and report on your healthcare assets. It is easier to track equipment data when there is an emphasis on regulations and asset reporting. Assisting you in making more educated decisions about asset lifecycles, upkeep, and regulations.
If you’re still reporting on your assets with whiteboards or notepads, bear in mind that the data is only as good as what you remember to write down.
- Improve Medical Waste Disposal
Healthcare facilities, especially hospitals, are required to dispose of medical waste in the most environmentally friendly manner feasible. It is necessary to dispose off waste in a secure and safe manner. It doesn’t matter if it’s pharmaceutical, biological, disposable medical equipment, chemicals, or radioactive.
You can correct your waste management practices with the correct healthcare asset management tool. Ensure that your garbage disposal meets regulatory norms.
- Improve Response Time
Medical equipment must be easily accessible and capable of functioning effectively and safely in order to keep up with the surge of patients. Front-line nurses may decrease wasted search time, boost productivity, shorten patient wait times, and accelerate response times in emergencies by being able to pinpoint assets within seconds.
Effective tracking also means that equipment and tools may be cleaned, maintained, or re-ordered in a timely manner so that they are immediately available when they are required the most.
Final Thoughts
As medical treatments become more advanced, the amount of scattered equipment, tools, and instruments employed in hospital operations has increased dramatically. Effective healthcare asset management is critical in this environment to guarantee patients have fast access to medical supplies and capital investment is successfully placed to good use. Having a system in place to optimise resource utilisation and workflow execution not only improves healthcare quality but also allows for quick and agile reactions in the event of an emergency.