Hospitals and healthcare facilities must constantly prepare for worst-case scenarios. When patients require prompt, efficient care to get them back on their feet, healthcare professionals need all the assistance they can find to streamline that process. Asset management programs (AMP) help procurement leaders improve their asset utilization and strategically plan for major changes, ongoing critical situations, and patient success stories.
Here are six concrete ways that an AMP like Joerns Connexio™ proprietary connected care solution can assist medical providers and the community they serve.
5 Non-Financial Benefits of Healthcare Asset Tracking
Reduces Staff Pressure & Increase Productivity
Manual and outdated inventory processes can tax the employees at your facility and make it difficult for them to focus on other tasks. The healthcare industry currently suffers from a shortage of talent. Supply chain experts, nurses, and other healthcare workers have suffered severe burnout due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
With updated Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS), you can relieve your hardworking team and use their skills for more practical tasks. Nurses and other employees no longer have to spend hours chasing down specific assets that have been lost in the shuffle of manual processes, nor do they have to perform the same task twice because of an error in documentation.
More Time to Troubleshoot Supply Shortages
Ventilators, N95 respirators, and hospital beds are just some of the many nationwide shortages experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. With a complete and thorough inventory provided by asset management and asset tracking, procurement leaders can better predict what the facility will need and gain more time to determine alternative routes should a supply source become unavailable.
Asset tracking can also benefit other members of a healthcare system, such as other hospitals or clinics, that might have more than they need of one item or require more items than other locations.
Better Use of Space & Storage
Over-procurement can wreak havoc on facilities management in healthcare, especially when space means having more room to put patients and focus on care rather than storage.
Furthermore, continuously maintaining mobile assets, like carts, makes it easier for healthcare providers and nurses to address the needs of each patient and clears space for travel in hallways and cramped hospital rooms. Asset tracking can detail the condition of these mobile assets and tell employees which ones they can use and which ones need to be repaired.
Lowers the Chances of Errors in Patient Care
Caring for patients and performing surgeries requires everything to go just right. Healthcare providers must properly sanitize their tools and correctly operate the machines.
AMP can provide real-time tracking of assets that need to be cleaned, that need to be calibrated, and that need to be removed. This information can help healthcare staff ensure that everything is properly sterilized and that machinery and technology get regular attention from experts and technicians. With automated data from an AMP that contributes to equipment management, providers can easily eliminate the chances of making simple mistakes that can be fatal to their patients.
Makes Updates and Transitions to New Processes Easier
The transition from manual operations to digital technology can bring overwhelming challenges to a healthcare facility with many assets. Updating or installing new software, implementing new methodologies, and replacing items that have been recalled becomes more manageable when your team can track the location of every affected item.
Changes won’t have to be a long, arduous process that involves hunting and gathering items but instead can be simplified into a single operation with a standard procedure.
Let the Asset Tracking Experts Help Your Facility
With AMPs like the Joerns Connexio™ proprietary connected care solution — an RTLS provided by Joerns Healthcare and CenTrack® — your healthcare facility can take the guesswork out of asset tracking and procurement. With a complete and accurate set of data at your leadership’s fingertips, healthcare professionals can devote more time and energy to patient care rather than asset management.