When it comes to patient care, it really does take a village. People often think of the nurses and doctors fighting the good fight against disease, sickness, and injuries. They are the knights in shining armor. But in reality, there are a lot of people within a hospital that support patient care.

Some of the most unsung heroes are hospital facilities management staff.

Facility management in healthcare needs to be tight: there’s not a lot of room for error. Proper asset management, timely equipment maintenance, meeting compliance codes, accurate budgeting for capital investments–all are equally important mechanisms in a delicate hospital ecosystem.  When one’s out of whack, the rest suffer.  More importantly, patients suffer.

The Role of Hospital Facilities Management

These professionals do more than just replace lightbulbs. Facility management teams have a significant impact on staff and patients. They make sure the hospital meets required compliance codes for The Joint Commission. Hospital facilities management teams help patients receive a high quality of care in comfortable environments. They’re like Batman. Working in the shadows, keeping equipment, rooms, and entire buildings functional, safe, and healthy for patients and staff.

Every system. Every piece of equipment. Every compliance code. There’s a lot on their plate.. So having the right hospital facility management software is invaluable. Read on to find out how a hospital facility management software can revitalize your healthcare operations.

Know Before You Go

Hospitals are complex. Knowing how to navigate the different floors, where every asset is, and what route to take for your inspection round can take years to master.

Most hospital facilities management teams have one or two team members who are the go-to for questions and challenges, which works fine…until those team members retire. Their other resource is a plans room that always seems to be a 15-minute walk away no matter where they are in the building. In it there are piles of paperwork to search through in order to find the floor plan or O&M manual they need. This searching, waiting for responses, and traveling can eat up hours of your team’s time every single week.

Hospital facility management software provides instant access to this vital information so teams can work efficiently and complete work correctly. Best-in-class hospital facility management software delivers digital floor plans with location-based asset mapping so your teams can visually see where every asset is. This benefits not just existing staff but can make new hires productive on day one.

Stay Ahead Of Hospital Maintenance

No facility director likes things falling through the crack. Competing priorities, emergency repairs, and staff service requests make it difficult for facilities management staff to keep track of everything going on. A good facility management software will track work orders and send notifications when new tasks are assigned. Team members can then complete their assigned work orders from their iPad or mobile device.

The right system also makes it easy to build preventive maintenance schedules which automatically create and assign work orders based on the schedule you decide.

Maintenance work doesn’t happen in a bubble. An outage or improper maintenance can have unintended consequences that affect patient health. Working on the wrong asset at the wrong time can even lead to death.

Hospital facility management software should visually show how assets and rooms are interconnected. This information is critical to planning maintenance and ensuring smooth collaboration between facilities and administrators.

Execute Hospital Compliance Plan Efficiently

Maintaining compliance is hard. Your hospital compliance plan guides your facilities team as to the steps they need to take to meet CMS, OSHA, The Joint Commission, and every other compliance code. Hospital inspections can take up to half of your technician’s day. Every single day. Managers and directors aren’t off the hook, as once the hospital inspection is complete they need to compile all that paperwork into reports and binders.

Hospital facility management software can drastically reduce the stress and time needed to maintain hospital compliance. Dedicated inspection programs help organize and automate these vitally important tasks. Reports are generated in real-time so your team is always prepared for an auditor to come knocking. Having software that also offers location-based asset mapping has shown to reduce inspection rounds in half.

Accurately Predict Hospital Capital Budgets

Building capital budgets for hospitals has been a historic challenge for healthcare organizations. You know it’s important to reduce deferred maintenance. But how do you know you are budgeting for the right projects? And how do you measure the success of those projects? Facility management software can make capital planning more accurate.

No longer will you have to rely on your facility director’s best guess. Access to the current condition and risk of all your hospital’s assemblies and assets, along with 30-year budget projections, lets you level out investments, prioritize the most urgent projects, and improve the quality of your hospital.

The Big Picture

A visual and easy-to-use hospital facility management software makes you and your team stronger.  Facility management software is a tool that can improve lives for patients, staff, and visitors alike. If your software isn’t empowering your team, find one that will. Not sure how to make a case for a new hospital facility management software? Check out our blog on how to build your case for investing in FM software.

Questions?  Concerns?  Stories to share?  Leave a comment below–we’d love to hear from you.