As more health systems consolidate, facilities managers are seeing the emergence of centralized facility management (CFM), according to an article on the FacilityCare website.
“The concept of being a facilities person in a single-site hospital continues to evolve to the potential to having a single-site hospital but also a corporate system that could own dozens of hospital facilities geographically dispersed all across the country,” said Tom Willie, CEO of Blue Pillar, a provider of energy management systems.
With CFM, a large healthcare system can centralize the oversight of their facilities. This centralization will help with allocating capital among numerous facilities, achieving greater operational oversight and monitoring and managing energy-efficiency programs, the article said.
The reasons for moving to CFM can be twofold, as was the case with the 24-hospital Florida Health System.
“First, we wanted to have complete oversight of our power distribution, especially our emergency power system. Our second need was to meet exacting regulatory documentation on our systems,” said Don Paschal, director of plant operations for Winter Park Memorial Hospital.