Hospital Asset Tracking: The Key to Efficiency, Compliance, and Patient Care

Maintenance
Healthcare
Published on:
October 30, 2024
Read Time:
14
min

Multiple processes contribute to the healthcare industry's success. 

These organizations span from medication producers to medical equipment providers, private hospitals to retirement homes, and the NHS - public health operations.

Each of these enterprises has hundreds, if not thousands physical assets.

Healthcare assets require thoughtful leadership and are necessities thus they must adhere to stringent control standards to ensure that the criteria established are met. Furthermore, fixed assets at a hospital are frequently a significant investment.

In 2023, the hospital tracking market is expected to be worth more than $14.5 billion. It is predicted to expand at a 16.8% CAGR to US$ 69 billion by 2033. Hospital asset tracking is used in healthcare settings to monitor significant machinery assets. Hospital asset monitoring reduces the time it takes to recover assets, reduces denied claims, increases staff efficiency, and improves regulatory compliance.

Hospitals that employ asset tracking are more likely to be aware of the state of their assets, even in unexpected circumstances such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

So, what is hospital asset tracking? 

And how can it improve your healthcare facility? 

Keep reading if you want to enhance efficiency, save expenses, and raise patient satisfaction.

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What is Hospital Asset Tracking?

Hospital asset tracking is a method of continuously monitoring and managing assets of any kind using proper technological innovations.

In a healthcare environment, assets might include medical supplies and additional equipment such as computers on wheels used by physicians to access the EHR/EMR or even people. Hospital asset tracking aims to improve efficiency, patient safety, and use costs.

Equipment Management: Tracking medical equipment is critical to ensuring that devices are available when needed, reducing downtime, and preventing problems that might jeopardize patients' treatment.

Patient Tracking: Certain systems track the movement of patients within the hospital. This can be effective for regulating patient flow, ensuring timely care, and improving patients' overall experience.

Staff Tracking: Geolocation and tracking employee behavior can assist in increasing communication among employees, streamline workflows, and make operations more efficient on a big scale. In an emergency, geolocation, and activity monitoring can assist in identifying the closest available individual in a variety of scenarios

Workflow Optimization: Hospital Asset tracking can simplify workflows and employ massive volumes of real-time data on the location and condition of assets. Managers can be able to become better decision-makers about where the asset is required, reducing hoarding and over/understocking of assets.

Inventory Control: Inventory control is a critical procedure for maintaining the needed number of supplies, decreasing surplus supply distribution, and providing great patient care while lowering overall expenses. By controlling the effective distribution of supplies across the hospital, the amount of wasted supplies is reduced, the overstock problem is resolved, and stockouts are minimized.

Preventative Care: Preventive maintenance is another resource management method that may be employed in the immediate setting of care. All preventative maintenance for all equipment used in clinics or throughout the hospital may be scheduled and tracked by the hospital. Hospitals can save money by being proactive rather than reactive.

What are the Challenges of Manual Hospital Asset Tracking

Manual asset tracking in the healthcare sector can be a difficult task that just leads to more complications and lost time. People employ non-automated, error-prone systems. Some of the challenges typically connected with hospital asset monitoring are waste of resources and inadequate patient experience affecting your brand reputation

1. Human Error

Because access to asset information must be entered manually, the possibility of human error is significant.

A person entering data into the system could provide incorrect information, misread the information required, or neglect to fill in some details. As a result of entering inaccurate information into the system, the asset riches information and recording are incorrect, diminishing the asset system's accuracy.

2. Time Consuming

Manual tracking procedures are extremely time-consuming, and staff members spend a lot of time documenting assets, updating document assets, and searching for document assets rather than delivering the important patient care that they should be.

3. Lack of Real-Time Update

A drawback of these manual tracking methods is that they do not provide real-time updates. This implies that updates are done regularly, and you cannot know the current condition of the gadget or its position. This can cause a delay in identifying an asset, resulting in inefficiency, delay, and, most importantly, interruption to patient care.

4. Inefficiencies in Reporting

Manual report generation can be time-consuming and error-prone, and it lacks the full insights provided by an automated reporting system. Less accurate or delayed information may hinder hospital decision-making processes and make it harder for hospital managers to make informed asset management decisions.

5. Data Security Issues

Manual tracking methods can produce several security shortcomings such as a lack of access control and audit trails, which can lead to unauthorized access or even manipulation of asset information.

 Security breaches can have a direct influence on data integrity and result in concerns such as theft, loss, or abuse of healthcare assets.

6. Auditing Difficulty

Manual asset tracking results in a protracted audit. Manual audits can be a time-consuming operation that is prone to human mistakes. As a result, regulatory compliance can be jeopardized, and the likelihood of record mistakes and inconsistencies increases significantly.

7. Lack of Integrations

Due to a lack of integration, data disparities can emerge within the organization's operating divisions as well as in other data collections that are normally held outside of the conventional HIS system.

How Digital Solutions Optimize Hospital Asset Tracking Management

Hospital asset tracking software is commonly used in most healthcare facilities to limit asset loss in hospitals, reduce the amount of time spent searching for an asset, provide real-time data on how the asset is being used, allow you to monitor drug storage conditions, and aid in the planning of your equipment's maintenance.

Why do Hospitals Need Asset Tracking Software?

1. Real-Time Tracking

Tracking different kinds of hospital assets such as medical equipment, hospital wheelchairs, and even diagnostic devices is one of the primary functions that Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) can be utilized.

Real-time tracking reduces hospital asset loss by giving helpful information and notifications on the whereabouts of the specific asset. Real-time tracking also aids in the efficient utilization of hospital assets by allowing users to swiftly find and utilize available resources.

2. Creating Access Routes to Required Equipment

 Indoor positioning allows users to identify the best route to take to reach the needed assets within the hospital's facility. This ability is extremely useful in an emergency, needing the least amount of time to locate assets in the liner foot installation.

3. Vaccine Tracking and Temperature Monitoring

Medications, including vaccines, are traced during the entire trip within the Medication Center utilizing navigational sensors, vaccination monitoring, and temperature monitoring that is linked to the smart cabinets.

By monitoring the Vaccine for proper temperatures, the managers ensure that the Vaccine is not compromised, rendering or ineffective.

Temperature monitoring will notify your Medication Center of any deviation, allowing for prompt corrective action to be taken and minimal risk of medication compromise to the patient.

4. Analytical Data of Hospital Assets

Analytical data on inventories and assets serve as the basis for extensive analytical reports on equipment and material utilization. One advantage of such data analytics is that the hospital inventory can be used optimally and the assets are properly used. This will be extremely beneficial in choosing and making informed choices on asset maintenance or asset replacement, among other things.

5. Staff Task Management

Hospital asset tracking software offers task management, which provides a task list for hospital staff members to complete and travel through to fulfill these jobs. This approach reduces staff effort by allocating tasks based on real-time asset locations, assuring efficient job fulfillment.

6. Occupancy Tracking

An ideal hospital management tool keeps track of the number of beds in a hospital and how a hospital can utilize it. This will assist hospital managers in managing bed availability, obtaining real-time data on patient admissions, and allocating resources efficiently.

7. Work Flow Optimization

Overall, the system improves healthcare workflow efficiency by delivering real-time information that reduces search times while also ensuring each resource is accessible for the next activity.

As a result, healthcare workers will be more efficient in their day-to-day operations. Furthermore, they will not waste time looking for resources, allowing the healthcare company to reduce its operational costs. As a result, the patient service quality would be improved.

How Xenia Helps Hospital Managers in Tracking Assets?

Founded by health experts, used for several years in home healthcare, and supported by an experienced development team, Xenia simplifies your existing manual procedure enhancing your operational efficiency. Xenia is a web-based healthcare maintenance management program designed to help you become more effective at work.

The advantages are clear: easier operations, workforce in control, reduced stress, consistent and proactive QA, less time lost, real-time information, and a reduction in unexpected downtime

real-time updates and task monitoring provide visibility into what is going on throughout the organization and hold everyone accountable for meeting deadlines. If a problem arises, the organization can collaborate with a specialist to resolve it before it becomes a major issue.

Furthermore, establishing and developing preventative maintenance calendars can assist you in resolving issues before they become serious, hence preventing downtime.

Why Xenia?

1. Work-Order Task Management

Allows users to quickly assign work orders or tasks, making healthcare maintenance operations easier to handle.

2. Asset Health Optimization

Asset Health Optimization is a strategy for maximizing asset health while avoiding breakdowns.

This feature is used to keep your healthcare equipment and facilities in good working order. When you use Asset Health Optimization, your assets are carefully maintained, which reduces unexpected breakdowns.

3. Smart Inspections

Customized Inspection Audits that are unique to your healthcare center to help you identify area of improvement.

4. Preventive Maintenance Calendars

Create establish and access preventative maintenance calendars. The method enables hospital managers to arrange maintenance in advance (proactively), which would result in less downtime and a longer lifespan for your assets.

5. Cleaning Task Assignment

Cleaning Task Assignment is the module in which particular work assignments for rooms and spaces are defined and assigned.

Its advantages are undeniably in the room's stringent hours and ensuring that staff who do certain jobs are scheduled each day to conduct the same chores regularly to create a clean and ordered atmosphere. This results in more uniform cleaning, which increases patient satisfaction and safety.

6. Real-Time Tracking

Real-time task tracking allows you to track the current state of a job. For example, As a manager. if you have assigned a maintenance and clean-up duties program to staff, you can see it online any second.

7. Quality Assurance

Managers can assess a library to establish and maintain standard operating procedures, as well as perform hospital safety walkthroughs and risk assessments.

This approach will guarantee that hospitals fulfill the required quality requirements and are by law.

The Bottom Line

Hospital asset monitoring software is redefining healthcare management practices as a whole.

Beyond the technology, it provides a complete answer to the multi-problems that current healthcare facilities face. Successfully integrating hospital asset tracking can usher in a new era of hospital administration by improving efficiency, cost-effectiveness, regulatory compliance, and even patient pleasure.

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