CMMSs help medical facilities thrive in the face of labor shortages

CMMS platforms give healthcare operations teams a centralized hub to automate and streamline maintenance workflows, monitor asset performance, and improve their data-driven decision-making capabilities.

Healthcare facilities like hospitals, clinics and specialists’ offices are complex and challenging to maintain. CMMS for healthcare solutions is a critical piece of enterprise asset management (EAM), enabling teams in these facilities to maintain critical assets through a combination of software, systems and services.

CMMS platforms help maintenance operations teams optimize asset uptime, streamline maintenance practices and automate compliance in a highly regulated industry. Healthcare facilities that rely on a CMMS to manage their maintenance activities improve patient safety, lower costs and reduce the likelihood of human error.

A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is a software platform that helps organizations automate workflows and improve maintenance operations from a single, centralized digital hub.

Before the widespread use of CMMS software, maintenance managers were forced to rely on manual tools like checklists and spreadsheets for their maintenance processes. As new technologies made assets more complex, these methods quickly became outdated.

Modern CMMS solutions are key enablers of digital transformation, allowing enterprises to use new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to increase efficiencies and optimize asset performance. CMMS platforms are in high demand, with the global market estimated at nearly USD 1.3 billion last year and projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11% annually.¹

Modern (CMMS) solutions help healthcare facilities plan, create, track and organize service requests, work orders and routine maintenance more efficiently, eliminating excessive task planning duties for limited biomedical equipment technicians (BMET).

By automating aspects of maintenance management that previously required human input, CMMS solutions help medical facilities optimize their maintenance operations.

Here’s a closer look at the benefits of CMMS software in healthcare facilities. Cloud-based CMMS platforms allow technicians to perform mobile maintenance, track work orders and access maintenance activities remotely with their mobile device.

• Increased operational efficiency: CMMS solutions are designed to automate many of the manual tasks (for example, work order management, preventive maintenance scheduling, inventory management, workflow tracking, and so on) that take up time in healthcare facilities. Automating these processes helps healthcare maintenance teams keep medical equipment in top shape so that medical staff has the equipment it needs to thrive. CMMS solutions also help maintenance teams prioritize tasks based on importance and time sensitivity. When maintenance can effectively prioritize tasks, healthcare facilities can more easily avoid equipment failures and downtime that negatively impact patient care.

• Enhanced employee training: A modern CMMS supports training and knowledge sharing among medical technicians so that every member of the team is optimizing their talents. For instance, healthcare CMMS software can store manuals, how-to guides and troubleshooting documentation, helping less experienced technicians learn the basics faster and experienced technicians take on more complex tasks.

• Remote patient monitoring: Many advanced CMMS platforms offer remote monitoring capabilities for staff that are responsible for monitoring patients in their homes. CMMS tools allow technicians to collect real-time data, monitor equipment performance and diagnose issues without being physically present. Remote monitoring enables technicians to address problems promptly, from anywhere, with mobile access to CMMS platforms, reducing the need for multiple site visits and optimizing their time and resources.

• More efficient scheduling: A modern CMMS can optimize workforce scheduling, integrating factors like technician availability, skillsets and workload. By efficiently assigning tasks and routes, a CMMS helps ensure that technicians are used effectively and that critical equipment maintenance and repairs are completed in a timely manner.

• Improved communication: CMMS software streamlines communication between suppliers and vendors, helping BMETs track maintenance contracts, warranty information and service agreements for the medical devices in a healthcare facility. Supplier coordination features also ensure that facilities have the support they need and can leverage external expertise.

• Extended asset lifecycles: A CMMS can provide a comprehensive view of the entire lifecycle of critical medical assets in a healthcare facility—from procurement and installation through maintenance, optimization and retirement. By tracking asset history, maintenance activities and performance data, a CMMS enables smarter decision-making about critical assets at an executive level. Leveraging a strategic approach to asset maintenance can help facilities optimize how they use equipment and reduce excessive technician workload.

• Better data visualization: CMMS platforms can gather and analyze healthcare facilities’ data, such as equipment performance, maintenance costs and technician productivity, and display it in a way that’s easily digestible for managers. Stakeholders can build and view customizable reports, visualize trend data and monitor asset functionality to make troubleshooting and inventory management simpler. This information helps managers identify inefficiencies, improve processes and make staffing decisions.

• Increased asset uptime: In healthcare facilities, functioning high-tech equipment makes a real difference in patient health outcomes, so maximizing asset uptime is crucial. CMMS software allows BMET teams to implement predictive maintenance programs and track preventive maintenance tasks, shifting healthcare facilities from reactive to proactive maintenance strategies and minimizing asset breakdowns.

• Automated regulatory compliance: Healthcare facilities must comply with a range of stringent regulatory standards. A CMMS can help facilities stay compliant by offering comprehensive asset tracking and maintaining detailed records of inspections, maintenance tasks and repairs. These features—along with mobile apps that can send technicians real-time asset status notifications—help medical organizations like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) achieve audit readiness.

• Alternative equipment maintenance: Alternative equipment maintenance (AEM) is a risk-based, data-driven strategy enabled by a CMMS that enables hospitals and other medical facilities to change manufacturer-recommended maintenance schedules according to their own historical data. AEM helps healthcare facilities optimize asset performance, reduce costs and protect patients by shifting away from rigid, calendar-based maintenance processes to a more bespoke approach that is still in compliance with required regulations.

Modern healthcare computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) solutions are centralized, data-driven enterprise platforms that streamline and automate maintenance operations in medical facilities.

CMMS solutions help maintenance managers repair medical devices more efficiently, optimize asset lifecycle management and make more informed, data-driven decisions. Here’s a closer look at their core features.

Healthcare CMMS software automates key aspects of work order management, such as maintenance requests and technician scheduling, and tracks each task to completion.

This process ensures that healthcare facilities have a detailed maintenance history for each asset in their portfolio that complies with the warranties issued by The Joint Commission, an independent organization that certifies healthcare providers in the US.

Healthcare CMMS software helps procurement managers responsible for maintaining inventories in healthcare facilities track spare parts and tools and keep detailed records.

Some CMMS platforms can be programmed to automatically reorder items when they are out of stock, helping managers reduce parts shortages and optimize stock levels.

Healthcare CMMS software platforms help maintenance operations teams evolve away from reactive maintenance practices, where components are only fixed or replaced when they have broken down.

Modern CMMS tools enable maintenance teams to implement predictive and preventive maintenance processes, where work orders are issued based on real-time maintenance data collected from IoT devices. These practices have been shown to extend asset lifespans and reduce the likelihood of costly breakdowns in healthcare facilities.

Advanced healthcare CMMS software platforms are equipped with user-friendly dashboards that can visualize key performance metrics (KPIs) like mean time to repair (MTTR) and mean time between failure (MTBF). These advanced healthcare systems enable medical facility managers to track the performance of their maintenance operations teams, asset health, uptime, downtime, and wear-and-tear in real-time.

Asset lifecycle management (ALM) for medical devices is a comprehensive, strategic approach to managing medical equipment like MRI machines, ventilators and monitors throughout their lifecycle. This process goes from procurement and installation through optimization and disposal. ALM helps medical facilities ensure that the assets they rely on are safe, effective and always compliant with relevant regulations.

ALM in a healthcare facility is critical to patient safety, ensuring the medical devices staff rely on to provide patient care are safe and effective. ALM also helps maintenance teams ensure that their practices are in line with healthcare standards like the Joint Commission and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

ALM for medical devices is typically broken down into four stages:

1. Procurement: The procurement stage is where stakeholders in a medical organization plan for the purchase of a medical device, considering factors like cost, performance and required training and maintenance.
2. Installation and deployment: In the installation and deployment stage, new medical devices are installed and tuned to the needs of the organization that has purchased them.
3. Optimization: During the optimization stage, managers track asset usage and KPIs to finetune how the asset is operating and assess how its meeting the organization’s needs.
4. Maintenance and disposal: Throughout its lifecycle, a medical device is constantly maintained with the preventive and predictive maintenance capabilities of a CMMS. Once KPIs indicate it is no longer capable of performing in a way that suits a healthcare facility’s needs, it is safely and efficiently disposed of.

-

Here are five real-world examples of how hospitals are using computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) solutions to improve their maintenance operations.

As the healthcare industry continues to evolve and adapt to meet the demands of a constantly changing market, healthcare computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software will continue to play a critical role. Here’s a look at three areas where innovation is likely to continue in the coming years:

• Clinical engineering: Clinical engineering, the management of complex medical devices throughout their entire lifecycle, is increasingly being done by CMMS platforms. In the future, as CMMS solutions take on more autonomy and become capable of managing even more tasks, this trend will likely continue. This approach can help facility maintenance teams better meet the maintenance needs of the organizations they serve.

• Augmented reality for asset maintenance: Augmented reality (AR), the real-time integration of digital information into a user’s environment, is already impacting how maintenance teams approach complex asset repair. Using AR technology, technicians can receive instructions about the assets they’re repairing in real-time, enhancing CMMS’s remote guidance and training capabilities and shortening asset repair cycles.

• Generative AI for asset management: Business leaders are increasingly looking to generative AI (gen AI), a type of AI that can create content in response to a user request to improve how they manage their physical assets. In CMMS for healthcare, gen AI can issue and track work orders, analyze and report on real-time IoT data and create detailed asset maintenance strategies. Some more advanced CMMS solutions allow users to interact directly with a system that uses natural language to ask for guidance, generate reports or issue a work order.