Managing a multi-system healthcare organization’s maintenance gets complicated quickly. From passing compliance inspections to preventing equipment downtime—or worse—disruption of critical medical services, hospital maintenance directors and their teams have a lot to take care of.
A healthcare CMMS simplifies the process and helps facility managers work more efficiently.
What is a healthcare CMMS?
While the first Computerized Maintenance Management Solution (CMMS) was designed in the mid-1960s, these advanced technologies were limited to large manufacturing firms with enough digital resources. A CMMS has become commonplace in organizations big and small, from hotels and higher education institutions to water utilities and healthcare providers.
CMMS stands for “computerized maintenance management system.” In broader terms, it is a digitized software that helps keep track of an organization’s facilities—the database catalogs everything from equipment, labor, inventory, and more. Essentially, it’s a maintenance management system that collects and streamlines data into one easy-to-access location.
Critical roles of a CMMS for healthcare facilities and biomedical teams
Managing a hospital facility is a big job, especially if most of the work is performed manually. From printing out physical work orders to re-entering data once completed, paper-based or disjointed maintenance management systems make updating and tracking assets, equipment, and rounding time-consuming and sometimes inaccurate.
Instead of manual data collection, technician scheduling, and tracking assets and vendors, a CMMS does all of this efficiently and at scale. This frees up the manager’s time to track the facility’s systems, coordinate any required maintenance, and use their time to run the hospital facilities efficiently.
A computerized maintenance management system goes beyond project management. It exists to fundamentally improve and streamline how an organization runs and operates a facility.
Here’s how:
1. Data collection and analysis
At its most basic level, a CMMS collects data. That data is then filtered and processed through the system, building out dashboards, insights, and information you need to run your facility. The database is a fundamental part of a maintenance management system.
Suppose your hospital or healthcare system lacks accurate inventory, floor plans, or other documentation. In that case, hospitals can access on-site data collection services to barcode and standardize the asset naming and tracking. This ensures that technicians and managers can view the most accurate equipment histories and performance metrics to make data-backed decisions.
2. Continuous monitoring and communication
Inherently, a computer exists to communicate. Maintenance management systems use digital communication workflows to continuously communicate both internally within the software and externally as a project management system. And for cloud-based platforms, your CMMS will work to ensure data availability and accuracy, even if it’s updated in real-time from the field.
Everything in a CMMS database is interconnected, gathering data and communicating the facility’s needs on both granular and high levels. Facility managers can also use a CMMS to communicate with vendors, assign work orders to technicians, and monitor asset performance to ensure everything is running smoothly.
3. Resource and process optimization
Maintenance management systems have existed to some degree since the 1960s. Time and technology have helped adjust and adapt the system to what it is today: digitized, simplified, and ever-changing.
CMMS is not just software that has changed with time. It also exists to help your organization improve. The data collected on your facility will help you make informed and strategic decisions. With everything involving your assets in one place, you can achieve facility management innovation with ease.
4. Long-term planning
A CMMS helps you plan far into the future and ensure that your efforts now will lead to a sustainable, high-quality physical environment. Regularly schedule preventative maintenance based on your equipment data, process the work orders, communicate with the vendors, schedule the labor, and manage the assets through your hospital’s CMMS.
The facility manager’s time will be freed up from trying to create a tool or system that works for your organization, and instead, work on optimizing and maximizing the facility.
How a CMMS delivers ROI for hospitals
Facility management is a critical component of a well-run organization. Your organization relies on critical machinery such as air conditioning, heating, and electricity, and a CMMS tracks any relevant equipment within an easy-to-use dashboard.
This means healthcare maintenance managers can streamline communication and guarantee the medical system won’t lose profit over faulty equipment with the ability to:
- Know exactly when to schedule preventative maintenance (PM)
- Optimize technician schedules to complete work orders on a timely basis
- Monitor equipment and workforce productivity
Hospital managers can also use a CMMS to manage work order requests better. Whether you’re trying to view all work requests, work orders, or vendor contracts, a medical CMMS provides a centralized, accessible source of information. Depending on your CMMS, you can create and automate message responses to the appropriate stakeholders upon completion.
And with the rise of big data, you can visualize and analyze your CMMS data to implement data-backed decisions. From predictive maintenance triggers to lowering your hospital building’s operation costs, the maintenance management system supports your business objectives and goals every day and night.
Run efficient hospital operations with intelligent tools
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, healthcare systems have become the cornerstone of society. Maintaining 100% equipment uptime and resource optimization can extend the value of your resources, environment, and workforce to ensure that no critical operations are disrupted, and you can provide a high-quality physical environment.
Still, this is difficult without the proper tools or resources. Improve how your maintenance management program runs and prevents downtime with modernized, comprehensive healthcare maintenance management programs with FSI.
FSI manages over 400 million ft 2 of facility space and surveys another 40 million ft2 every year. This allows FSI customers to run smoother, intelligent facility operations. Whether you’re in healthcare, education, or public sector, our turnkey solution and asset inventory services deliver an integrated platform that drives quick and effective facility maintenance, asset and space management, analytics, and regulatory compliance.
Gain instant access to a truly mobile solution that creates a more productive, safe, and reliable facility for your patients, staff, and auditors. Everything we do is driven by your needs, helps you shine in your role, and delivers a fantastic facility experience.
Contact us to request a demo and see how we can help you.