How Asset Tracking Can Help Your IT Team Manage Maintenance

Your hospital’s IT department is responsible for the upkeep of your assets and equipment. Asset tracking helps them manage repairs effectively, ensuring your providers and nursing staff have the equipment they need to provide care for your patients.

Why Asset Tracking is Important

Asset tracking is an umbrella term that encompasses much more than tracking the location of your equipment, though that’s an important part of asset tracking. Included under the asset tracking umbrella are all practices that keep your assets working as they should and where they should, and keep track of entrances to certain areas to watch for infections.

Effective tracking devices for hospital equipment prolong the working life of your equipment. A professional asset tracking system helps your IT team manage repairs and prevent issues before they arise. Asset tracking that supports your IT department, saves time and money, and facilitates a safer and more effective work environment. Having the right software is crucial to your asset tracking program, which is why choosing the right partner has such a significant influence on your hospital’s success.

Your IT team carries a lot of responsibility, including managing equipment repairs. RTLS hospital tracking makes repair scheduling, execution, and even prevention easier for your team. Below we walk you through a few of the ways asset tracking helps your IT team manage repairs.

Asset Tracking and Repair Management

Professional asset tracking provides innumerable benefits to IT teams within hospital systems. The right RTLS asset tracking promotes efficient, effective, and cost-saving repairs.

1. Data Collection

Data collection is a significant aspect of asset tracking. Collecting –– and understanding –– the data on your equipment enables you to make informed decisions that lead to greater efficiency and cost savings, specifically in your IT department.

Organizing your data is the first step in effectively managing your assets, so choosing your asset tracking is key. An effective asset tracking program compiles all your equipment data into a succinct, readable format that IT professionals can share seamlessly across your organization.

Once your data is compiled, your IT department can easily organize that information to manage equipment repairs. Having the data on hand allows your team to create a preventative maintenance schedule, as well as, take care of immediate repair needs.

The adage rings true: knowledge is power. Equipping your IT team with asset tracking that puts data at their fingertips empowers them to carry out repairs more efficiently and with quality results.

2. Allows for Preventive Maintenance Schedule

Effective maintenance does more than simply fix broken parts, it prevents those breaks from happening in the first place. Asset tracking provides a clear and effective means to carry out preventive maintenance on your equipment, helping your IT team manage repairs.

Preventive maintenance ensures your equipment isn’t unexpectedly breaking down when you need it most. In addition to equipment failure prevention, preventive maintenance prolongs the life of your assets and improves equipment reliability. Preventive maintenance at your hospital might include the following:

• Equipment checks

• Partial or total refurbishing

• Repairs scheduled for a specific time

This kind of monitoring keeps your assets in top performance condition, so providers are never without the equipment they need.

Scheduled preventive maintenance allows your IT team to evaluate every asset within your hospital’s walls. Preventive maintenance promotes a hands-on approach that ensures each piece of equipment is inspected, preventing any issues from slipping through the cracks.

Though preventive maintenance requires more upfront funding than a reactive or run-to-failure maintenance approach, preventive maintenance offers many benefits that reactive repair does not.

Preventive maintenance:

• Decreases equipment downtime
• Saves energy
• Provides flexibility
• Is safer than reactive maintenance
• Increases overall efficiency
• Boosts equipment effectiveness
• Reduces the probability of failure

Asset tracking allows for maintenance to occur according to your IT team’s schedule. Instead of making emergency repairs, which can be chaotic and stressful, your team makes predictable, scheduled repairs. Preventive maintenance scheduled through asset tracking allows your IT team to work efficiently and in a focused environment, reducing error while promoting a healthier and more enjoyable work environment.

3. Fund Allocation

Hospital asset tracking puts all your equipment data in front of your IT team. The organized data allows them to see immediate repair needs as well as preventive maintenance schedules as we mentioned above. Mapping out repairs not only makes maintenance more efficient but saves money as well.

Since asset tracking allows your IT team to determine both immediate and eventual equipment repair needs, it makes it easier for IT to budget for these repairs. Tracking provides all of the data needed for IT to map out repairs and allocate funds, so there are no surprises after the budget has been set.

IT uses the collected data from RTLS hospital asset tracking to determine which equipment needs repair and how much of the budget can be spent on those repairs. Through asset tracking, your IT department can see if other pieces of the same equipment are available for use. If your hospital has equipment that isn’t being utilized, asset tracking allows IT to see this and postpone repairs in lieu of utilizing working equipment that has been stored away.

4. Save Time

Asset tracking helps your IT team manage repairs through a variety of avenues, but perhaps the greatest benefit of asset tracking lies in time management. Asset tracking saves time, which frees up your IT team to make necessary repairs and tackle other important tasks.

Asset tracking puts relevant data at your fingertips. Real-time data updates give your IT department access to all the information they need to know to make repairs effectively and efficiently. They don’t have to spend time siphoning through data in a shared document, nor do they need to thumb through paper records. Asset tracking streamlines hospital operations across the board, including in your IT department. When your IT team works efficiently, they save time, which saves money.

Conclusion

Asset tracking streamlines your IT department’s responsibilities and helps them better manage your hospital’s equipment repairs. Choosing the right asset tracking increases efficiency, decreases costs, and ultimately empowers staff to provide better care for their patients.

Asset tracking is revolutionizing hospital operations. Contact Altus today to learn how our asset tracking solutions can meet your hospital’s unique needs.