By Lindsey Walker / Special to Healthcare Facilities Today

From small medical clinics to rehab centers to multispecialty hospitals, healthcare facilities have a lot of medical equipment and confidential data that needs to be managed efficiently. The challenges of running a healthcare facility while upholding high standards may seem like an insurmountable task especially when the infrastructure includes living space, specialized equipment, office space, and recreation space. Any inefficiency in managing vital infrastructure equipment and living space can not only affect employee productivity but also increase the liability risk. This calls for a fully-loaded computerized maintenance management system that goes beyond documentation and work order management. Following are 5 ways in which CMMS software streamlines maintenance management functions that are crucial to running healthcare facilities at peak efficiency:

1.    Organized work order inspections

Failed inspection points can be used for generating corrective work orders. Issuing work orders with clearly defined user roles for identifying and rectifying any failures detected during a periodic inspection eliminates complications and keeps maintenance issues from cascading. Using a CMMS solution, healthcare facility managers can assign work, track the progress and ensure that it is completed in a timely and efficient manner. 

2.    Improved responsiveness

With a CMMS, it becomes easy to prioritize work orders, ensure the availability of essential resources, track inventory and divide the workload according to urgency and importance. A CMMS sends instant notifications to the maintenance technicians in case of emergency issues to facilitate faster troubleshooting. With a computerized maintenance management system, it becomes easy to send and receive mission-critical information anytime, anywhere. With easy access to work orders on any device, the troubleshooting process becomes much faster and accurate allowing field technicians to be more productive and focused. 

3.    Efficient labor management

A CMMS comes with easy-to-follow labor management options that organize everything right from planning and delegation of work orders to scheduling of shifts and completion of tasks. Using a CMMS, healthcare facility managers can easily access maintenance schedules and assign upcoming work in a predefined sequence to avoid overlapping. When it is time to dispatch crucial maintenance tasks, a CMMS makes it easy to keep a constant track of time and resources. The features of a CMMS are custom-tailored to suit the specific needs of the healthcare industry and come with ready-to-use templates that aid in implementing preventive maintenance tasks while cutting down on both time and effort.

4.    Enhanced compliance

Any healthcare facility must adhere to stringent government regulations and maintain high standards during performance audits. A CMMS helps in collating all the vital information and generating accurate reports for audits. The medical equipment also requires periodic inspections to ensure that it is working accurately and efficiently. A CMMS enables you to safely store all the required PM schedules and equipment records on an easy to access centralized location where you can find them easily during government audits.  

5.    Superior safety & security

A CMMS software is engineered to support all the healthcare functions safely through real-time insights into assets, inventory and equipment maintenance. Whether it is the functioning of elevators, regulation of HVAC systems, access for the disabled patients, plumbing repairs, food storage equipment or medical machines, a computerized maintenance management system monitors everything so that your healthcare staff can focus their efforts on resolving the issues at hand instead of locating items and dissecting devices for flaws at the last minute. 

Like every industry, even hospitals and healthcare facilities need to make profits. The growing competition in this sector requires that all hospitals and healthcare facilities work at maximum efficiency to stay competitive and compliant. A CMMS system helps healthcare facilities save time and streamline operations which in turn enhances efficiency and patient experience. Investing in a CMMS is the easiest way to increase profits while keeping all legal issues, liabilities and errors away.