Hospital asset management system
Healthcare organisations require a considerable and wide range of assets. With sensible planning and implementation of best practices, healthcare facilities can unlock the full potential of their assets. In your industry, there is no room for error. You need to have knowledge and control of your critical assets, facilities, and medical equipment.
In hospitals, clinics, and aged care facilities, hospital asset management is essential for tracking and maintaining medical equipment, supplies, and other critical assets. It supports efficient inventory control, minimises equipment downtime, and maximises the use of valuable resources.
By adopting an asset management system, these healthcare environments can enhance asset monitoring and healthcare asset tracking. Providing a high level of service and safety for your workers, patients, and guests.
In hospital asset management, healthcare asset tracking systems are used to effectively track, manage and maintain medical equipment, devices, and supplies within the hospital setting. These systems ensure the availability of critical assets when needed, optimise asset utilisation, and streamline maintenance and servicing schedules.
By accurately tracking assets, hospitals can prevent equipment loss or misplacement, reduce downtime, and enhance patient care and safety. By effectively managing and tracking assets, healthcare organisations can optimise their supply chain processes, minimise waste, reduce stockouts, and improve overall supply chain performance. Healthcare Asset Tracking Boosts Outcomes and Cuts Costs
For a number of reasons, effective asset tracking in healthcare is essential. First off, medical equipment tracking software assists in reducing waste whilst maximising medical assets usage. Effective asset management and maintenance monitoring guarantees that equipment and machinery is ready when needed, cutting downtime, and increasing operational effectiveness.
Medical equipment tracking
Through the identification of medical equipment using RFID and/or Barcodes you can report on assets that may need repairs or replacement and eliminate wasteful purchases. Enterprise asset management systems help minimise expenses. Healthcare and aged care organisations can save a lot of money by making the most of their assets’ lifetime and utilisation.
Medical equipment tracking saves hospitals significant time and money by providing real-time visibility into the location and status of critical assets. With technologies like RFID and RTLS, staff can quickly locate equipment, reducing the hours wasted searching for devices and allowing more time for patient care.
This efficiency directly translates into cost savings, as hospitals and aged care facilities avoid unnecessary purchases or rentals by optimally utilising existing equipment and minimising losses due to theft or misplacement-issues that can cost thousands of dollars per bed annually.
Equipment tracking systems streamline maintenance schedules, reducing equipment downtime and repair costs, while ensuring compliance with regulatory standards. Overall, by improving asset utilisation, reducing procurement and maintenance expenses, and boosting staff productivity, medical equipment tracking delivers a strong return on investment and enhances the quality of patient care.
Hospital asset tracking system: maintenance and integration
Regular maintenance and calibration of medical equipment ensure proper diagnosis, treatment, patient safety, and high-quality care. Additionally, asset monitoring helps maintain worker safety and organisational integrity by ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. Hardcat software solutions deliver the specialised capabilities needed for efficient asset management, supporting your business practices and integrating seamlessly with existing enterprise IT ecosystems.
Hardcat’s healthcare asset management is used by facilities to deliver significant benefits including:
- Manage preventative maintenance throughout the entire asset lifecycle.
- Schedule both ad-hoc and cyclical maintenance jobs to ensure optimal life of assets.
- Template repetitive work order maintenance tasks for efficiency and consistency.
- Manage risk and compliance by capturing all the required data to provide proof.
- Execute operational objectives, by providing the oversight and traceability to reduce risk and generate reports with a single click.
- Establish best practices by standardising procedures for complex operational requirements and management required with critical equipment.
Hardcat’s hospital equipment tracking systems are essential in healthcare and aged care industries for effectively managing all types of assets, such as medical equipment, patient handling aids, facilities, and other critical assets such as beds. With Hardcat’s software solutions you can manage the use, availability and location of diagnostic medical devices and life-support equipment with ease.
Medical assets and inventory management
Our hospital asset tracking software not only enables you to monitor the location and maintenance schedules, but also the recording of item check-outs/returns to borrowers and loans to other departments. All movements are recorded so you know exactly where the item is and where it has been. Electronic check-in/out is captured from borrowers when they receive/return the item(s) in their possession. Storing detailed information, such as return due dates and the names of people/departments who have used the equipment. Authorised medical staff can access and edit this data based on their role-specific permissions.
Inventory includes everything from Residual Current Devices protecting electric power outlets, through to patient monitoring systems in critical care environments. Many of these items are portable and used across multiple departments within an organisation’s hospitals, dispersed satellite clinics and aged care facilities. Hardcat solutions support departmental objectives to increase automation of work orders for scheduled maintenance and tracking of this equipment and associated parts inventory.
An ISO9001-accredited system, Hardcat allows you to take a holistic or siloed view of assets groups or assets classes while also facilitating floor-plan mapping to track locations. A combination of barcodes/RFID tags and hand-held devices are used to capture and present real-time data about the status of individual assets.
Hardcat solutions significantly improve processes for storing and managing spare parts which will significantly increase productivity. Photos of a part (contained with the asset record) will help locate it quickly. Set alerts so we are notified when minimum stock thresholds are breached and generate a regular stock re-order report.
Improve medical equipment tracking and compliance
Hardcat’s software solutions for healthcare asset tracking creates work orders and help track the maintenance history of equipment. You can schedule preventative maintenance, manage reactive maintenance, and track compliance with industry regulations. To ensure efficient management and maintenance of your medical devices, here are five key strategies you should implement:
1. Implement a tracking system
To effectively manage your medical devices, start by implementing a robust tracking system. By tracking your devices, you can easily locate them, monitor their usage, and quickly identify any potential issues. A good tracking system provides visibility and control, ensuring devices are always where they need to be and are functioning (maintained) correctly.
2. Conduct audits
Audits are crucial for maintaining the accuracy of your tracking system. Audits involve physically checking and verifying the location and condition of your medical devices. This helps identify missing or damaged devices promptly. Ensuring your tracking system remains reliable and up-to-date.
3. Utilise Barcodes or RFID Tags
Incorporating barcodes or RFID tags into your tracking system is a cost-effective and efficient way to manage your medical assets. Scanning these codes or tags, you can quickly identify devices. Providing near real-time data that is essential for effective device management.
4. Monitor Maintenance and Calibration
Routine maintenance and calibration of assets is essential for ensuring their proper operation and the accuracy of their results. By systematically tracking these activities, healthcare providers can adhere to maintenance schedules and detect potential issues early, preventing them from escalating into major problems. This proactive strategy not only supports compliance with regulatory standards but also prolongs the lifespan of medical equipment and preserves its reliability. Well-maintained and accurately calibrated devices are fundamental to patient safety and the delivery of high-quality healthcare.
Our hospital asset tracking solutions help healthcare and aged care organisations improve efficiency and extend asset lifespans. Hardcat solutions also enhance equipment reliability, reduce downtime, and improve patient and resident care by better managing assets and resources.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is asset tracking in healthcare?
Healthcare facilities use asset tracking systems to monitor the location of medical equipment, inventory supplies and other physical assets across their facilities. The system enables maximum asset utilisation whilst reducing unnecessary expenses, which leads to lower total asset management costs.
Without asset tracking healthcare facilities waste valuable time and resources looking for equipment. Incorporating an enterprise asset management solution into traditional asset management practices allows healthcare settings to make data-driven decisions, streamline maintenance processes, reduce risk and improve compliance.
Main benefits:
- Enables staff to locate equipment swiftly
- Improved inventory management with real-time stock levels
- Tagging assets lowers loss/theft rates
- Fewer unnecessary purchases
- Lowers maintenance costs
- Reduces waste
- Report on regulatory compliance
- Centralises asset information
In practice, hospitals using asset tracking have reported search times for equipment dropping from 30 minutes to under 3 minutes, and thousands of dollars saved by eliminating unnecessary purchases and reducing losses.
What is hospital asset management?
Hospital asset management software helps facilities solve their logistical problems. The system tracks equipment locations and monitors equipment maintenance status to achieve maximum operational efficiency.
The availability of critical patient devices remains uninterrupted through equipment and inventory shortage prevention and device maintenance. Providing cost effective operational readiness. Resulting in better patient outcomes.
Hospitals must follow compliance rules, and an asset management system helps hospitals show they are meeting compliance. The automation of compliance management decreases the chance of non-compliance which prevents organisations from facing expensive penalties.
Asset tracking focuses on minimising waste generation, maximising resource recovery, and optimising asset lifecycles. Healthcare providers can use asset tracking systems to analyse asset data which enables them to optimise asset utilisation, schedule maintenance and predict future requirements. The strategic decision-making process and long-term planning receive support through this approach.
How does RFID help in healthcare asset management?
Healthcare asset tracking relies on software and hardware systems together with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and/or barcode technology as its fundamental components. Real-time asset tracking and management becomes possible through software solutions which enhance operational efficiency and decrease expenses.
Healthcare providers use mobile apps to rapidly access an asset‘s tag and update asset data (such as location) which improves patient care delivery. Mobile apps allow for creation of work orders and help track the maintenance history of equipment. You can schedule preventative maintenance, manage reactive maintenance, and track compliance with industry regulations.
What are examples of healthcare assets?
Healthcare organisations purchase a wide variety of assets and equipment to support patient care. From large and expensive x-ray machines to multiple emergency trolleys with life saving equipment such as blood pressure monitors.
- Medical equipment (e.g., infusion pumps, ventilators, imaging devices)
- Clinical supplies
- IT equipment (e.g., computers, printers)
- Temperature-sensitive drugs
- Mobile carts and portable storage units
- Facility infrastructure, fittings and furniture such as expensive patient beds
Enterprise asset management helps healthcare organisations keep track of aging equipment and their maintenance. Where they are located and who used them last. Ultimately, healthcare asset management is trusted with getting the maximum value out of assets with as little capital and operational expenditure as possible.
IT systems and IoT
IT Asset Management (ITAM) keeps operations smoothly running. IT assets in healthcare environments include servers, computers, and mobile devices. As well as the networking infrastructure, such as routers and switches, necessary to keep everything connected. Additionally, IoT devices that do everything from monitoring temperature-sensitive drugs to tracking hand hygiene in healthcare facilities.
Facilities and infrastructure
Critical fixed assets, such as facilities and building infrastructure, make up an important part of the healthcare asset portfolio. Tracking and managing not just the real estate and infrastructure that their organisation owns, but also the assets that it leases. Thorough documentation and contract management of these leased assets can help healthcare organisations understand the full range of their available resources and keep a lid on recurring costs.
Furniture and fixtures
There are all kinds of furniture that keeps clinics, nursing stations, and offices functional. From waiting-room chairs to expensive hospital beds. These assets must be carefully managed to make sure they’re available, functional, safe, and hygienic.
Medical consumables inventory
Healthcare depends on strong inventory management practices. Asset administrators need to ensure that teams never run out of life-saving consumables, while also avoiding overstocking expensive items.
Transportation
Vehicles used for patient transport is another category deemed as an asset. Preventative maintenance is crucial here to keep these assets reliably operational and to lengthen their life cycle.
