What Is Asset Management in Healthcare?
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In the healthcare setting, hospital asset management deals with managing and maintaining equipment, machinery, and physical assets. Clinical asset management helps to improve the healthcare experience by ensuring medical equipment is ready and available when needed. Strategic and standardized clinical asset management also helps healthcare facilities always stay regulatory ready.
Benefits of Standardized Clinical Asset Management
Standardizing asset management in healthcare offers healthcare systems a range of benefits which include:
Improving Patient Care
Effective clinical asset management contributes to a positive and safe patient experience. Clinical staff should spend as much time as possible by the bedside so the standard of care in a hospital doesn’t falter. Strong clinical asset management programs ensure clinicians have what they need when they need it. On the other hand, poor asset management often means healthcare staff need to spend time tracking down missing assets. This loss of focus can negatively impact patient care, increase wait times, and affect the number of beds available at a given time.
Healthcare facilities can improve patient care by ensuring clinical assets are located where they need to be and operating at peak performance. Likewise, an effective asset management system makes managing work orders and inventory easier. By reducing the time healthcare professionals need to devote to requesting service or finding equipment, hospitals increase the time healthcare staff can instead spend with patients.
Increasing Staff Productivity
When clinical staff need to devote time to finding equipment, that takes time away from patient care while increasing costs for a healthcare system. Maintenance can take place in quieter periods, minimizing disruption overall.
Reducing Costs for Healthcare Systems
An effective asset management system can significantly reduce expenditures. Effective management can analyze trends and data for better planning of future expenditures. Maintenance planning also allows healthcare systems to coordinate inventory and order, translating to bigger savings thanks to economies of scale and opportunities for bulk purchases. Clinical asset management also leads to cost reduction due to asset loss prevention.
Standardizing clinical asset management is essential for hospitals and healthcare systems. Effective asset management helps ensure medical equipment is available when it is needed, allowing staff to better care for their patients.
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