Hospital asset management refers only to a highly organized and cost-effective method for storing, purchasing, maintaining, using, and disposing of machines, equipment, and physical assets of any health organization. From patient care equipment, such as beds and chairs, to operational stock, such as blood pressure monitors, knowing the location of each equipment or item is imperative for any health unit.
Asset management is crucial to ensuring that a hospital's core equipment is regularly maintained, tested and maintained in reliable operational order. In addition, it allows hospitals to ensure that all their medical equipment operates with maximum efficiency and is prepared to support patient care.
Without proper supervision of vital assets, medical professionals may struggle to provide their patients with the quick and caring care they need. This, in turn, can impair patient satisfaction and long-term health outcomes. Therefore, it is crucial that the health sector has reliable equipment available at all times. When you have a hospital asset management tool in place, you can quickly track assets that are inaccessible or may have disappeared. This allows your medical staff to spend less time searching for misplaced medical equipment. In addition, asset management is crucial to ensuring that your hospital's essential equipment is regularly maintained, tested and maintained in consistent operational order.
In addition, it helps health organizations reduce administrative costs and the possibility of human error by allowing employees to focus on tasks more connected to health operations. With health asset management, medical institutions can monitor equipment at any time and make effective management decisions regarding scheduled maintenance.
An RFID hospital equipment tracking system provides the last-known or even real-time location of a piece of equipment, using a Real-Time Location System (RTLS) built on passive UHF RFID to provide cost-effective healthcare asset management solutions.
Contactless tracking and automated operation are two additional advantages of RFID for healthcare, especially when compared to barcode-based solutions.
Automated asset tracking saves hospitals time and helps them avoid unnecessary purchases to replace hard-to-locate equipment. With inventories of hundreds of pieces of equipment across extensive facilities nurses waste precious time searching for a wheelchair or IV pump, or surgeries may be delayed because a critical piece of equipment can’t be found.
Routine hospital operations present many challenges for hospital management. The best possible patient care constantly competes with optimal and cost-efficient staff and resources. SmartX HUB’s Medical Asset Tracking will play a crucial role in improving operational processes in healthcare facilities and assisting your organization in providing the best possible care:
The primary goal of healthcare is to support and preserve people’s health. But it’s not just doctors and nurses who can save patients’ lives with life-saving procedures; RTLS can save lives, too. In medical emergencies, rapid location of medical equipment and appropriate staff response is critical. Hospitals are usually complex buildings with many medical devices spread across different floors.
Medical Asset Tracking from SmartX HUB helps employees locate devices as quickly as possible using a mobile app. This saves valuable time, which can be spent on treating patients.
The following video illustrates this shared increase in accuracy and efficiency of the RTLS in the Healthcare process.
To better serve your patients, below are some of the best practices you can implement to improve your hospital's asset management:
Maintaining the highest level of care requires constantly knowing where the mission-critical equipment is, inside and outside the health unit. It helps create a list of all assets that are replaceable, as well as their locations within the facility and on any service vehicles connected to it, such as ambulances and other transport vehicles.
Keep records of all collected data, as well as the current operational status of assets. The better the documentation of your asset, the easier it will be to maintain or perform other operations on your equipment. Classifying your assets will ensure that you can successfully track your lifecycles because multiple assets have varying maintenance and life requirements.
Medical equipment is often sanitized and exposed to environmental hazards. Therefore, be sure to use labels and asset labels that can support continuous exposure to these conditions. Although several types of active labels are available, we recommend polyester thermal labels made with highly durable acrylic adhesives. These asset labels can withstand complex internal and external configurations and come in stock with yellow or white polyester labels.
If necessary, your healthcare unit can also invest in barcode labels for valuable assets vulnerable to theft. To leave behind signs of tampering and reduce theft, use destructive vinyl asset labels and tamper evidence barcode labels. Determine the compatibility of the tag with the equipment before choosing to use it.
Use our asset lifecycle management system
A healthcare unit must track and keep records of the condition of its assets and the current value. These records will simplify the maintenance schedule and lifetime cost calculations. As a result, health organizations have enough time to plan and replace defective parts before they become a significant problem or seriously harm the system.
With asset lifecycle management technologies, healthcare IT personnel can prepare for upcoming equipment purchases. For example, companies that keep accurate asset records can easily identify similar items that perform better than others with relative ease. Because of this, companies have more options for manufacturers when it comes time to replace these assets, extending their useful life. Use a computerized maintenance management system for productive results.
Medical professionals may be able to provide better care to their patients when they take an active role in maintaining equipment in good working condition. As a result, less time is wasted rushing to other medical departments to acquire supplies.
By keeping assets in peak condition, preventive maintenance extends their useful life and reduces the expense of purchasing new assets. Monitoring hygiene schedules is another benefit of preventive health maintenance, reducing hospital infection risk.
By labelling or Tagging assets with distinctive RFID identifications, healthcare companies can more easily implement check-out/check-in systems. These systems offer real-time data on the location and availability of the equipment. Over time, accumulated data aids in optimizing equipment investments, enabling you to purchase more of the frequently in-demand but short-supply assets.
Even if duplicate assets do exist periodically, they are never used simultaneously. Healthcare organizations may decommission and reduce the size of these assets. As a result, equipment costs are reduced without affecting other crucial resources’ accessibility.
With the advancement of medical technology, the number of tools, devices, sensors, and other ad hoc equipment used in hospital operations has increased significantly. Effective management of health assets is crucial to ensure that patients have timely access to medical supplies and are in good working condition.
Therefore, it is up to a hospital facilities team to ensure that all medical equipment is carefully inspected and repaired to ensure compliance with health regulations. In addition to raising the standard of care, implementing an appropriate hospital asset management plan can optimize resource usage and workflow execution, providing rapid and flexible emergency responses.
The SmartX HUB RFID is a cloud-based solution that provides healthcare providers with robust asset tracking and management. It helps you better manage your facility and equipment. You can easily control your operational tasks and ensure that the equipment operates reliably and efficiently enough to guarantee patient care and patient satisfaction.
SmartX HUB's medical tracking is part of SmartX's Solution for Track & Trace and leverages IoT-RFID and Cloud platforms for data capture. Smartx hub's Solution for Track & Trace advances its past success in traceability technology by enabling multiple business use cases through applications and business intelligence.
SmartX HUB's global presence, coupled with its deep industry and business transformation expertise, has proven that the methodologies and experience gained from thousands of worldwide engagements help hospitals achieve accurate business results and innovation quickly and cost-effectively.
Contact us to get more information on how we can help you overcome the challenges to your healthcare business, or check out a free demo.
Contact us at the SmartX office nearest to you or submit a business inquiry online.
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