Too often, healthcare facilities spread maintenance operations across multiple disjointed delivery networks and separate locations. This leaves healthcare practices struggling to manage work orders, the workforce, and preventative maintenance, which can lead to inaccurate and inefficient data and high spending.
But what if there was a single view allowing healthcare facilities to know who maintains what, when, and for how much? This way, everyone has the ability to anticipate future needs and handle critical repairs before they escalate to major problems.
Streamlining your healthcare facilities maintenance
Streamlining and centralizing a facilities maintenance program will help healthcare professionals provide better patient/customer experience, improve brand value, extend asset life, optimize costs, and leave more resources and time to focus on more critical areas of the facilities including business strategies, business expansion, and more. The result: better productivity, increased ROI, and uninterrupted services.
With a future-proof facility maintenance strategy, healthcare center operators can effectively manage all daily operations without compromising quality. At the same time, such a strategy helps maintain a clean, safe, well-functioning, and sanitized facility that positively influences the patient experience. Also, when it comes time to scale up, having an existing maintenance strategy in place makes it easy to implement effective measures right away in your new location.
Challenges when streamlining facilities maintenance
When it comes to streamlining facilities maintenance, healthcare providers should be aware of the key challenges in their efforts to streamline facilities maintenance in healthcare centers. They include:
Cleanliness and hygiene
In health facilities, cleanliness and hygiene is one of the key indicators of patient satisfaction. But it goes beyond this. It also helps eliminate the spread of Healthcare Acquired Infections (HAI). Reducing the risk of any kind of infection means cleaning the facility regularly and taking proper care of floors, creating good indoor ventilation, and encouraging sunlight.
Safety
Ensuring that patients and staff are safe and secure should always be the number one priority in any healthcare center. But this can be challenging, especially for older facilities, because of their aging infrastructure and older HVAC systems.
In areas that experience extreme weather conditions, for example, patients and staff can be affected by harsh conditions such as freezes and natural disasters. Addressing key issues related to structural stability and maintenance can help extend the useful life of the infrastructure while ensuring that every occupant is safe.
Energy management
Since healthcare facilities serve thousands of patients, visitors, and employees 24/7, they consume a lot of energy in lighting, cooling, refrigeration, ventilation, and other systems. In fact, hospitals in the U.S. spend over $10 billion every year on electricity. As the cost of energy increases, it can consume up to three percent of the total hospital’s operating budget.
For this reason, healthcare facilities often must have a carefully coordinated program to reduce energy usage without interrupting vital services. This may include using advanced tools to monitor and control high-energy-consuming systems to uncover the most cost-effective energy efficiency upgrades.
Aging equipment
The maintenance department at any healthcare center is tasked to keep assets sustainable and cost-effective. They also have to deal with cases of unplanned equipment shutdown which may lead to serious medical issues and even loss of life. Preventing breakdowns is much less expensive than repairing them, which is why skillful planning backed by specific facility maintenance tools is essential to extending the life of existing assets.
How to streamline FM across multiple locations
Every facility within a healthcare center has different goals, priorities, and areas of vulnerability. These simple tips can help:
Maintain cleanliness and sanitation
Healthcare facilities are required to maintain utmost cleanliness and hygiene to reduce the growth of HAI, which can be spread between patients, hospital staff, and visitors.
Facilities will need to create effective cleaning and infection control programs to ensure the highest standards of hygiene and cleanliness are maintained. This includes proactive and regular cleaning, disinfection, and creating a more comfortable environment for the patient.
Stay safe and secure
The safety of patients is of utmost importance in any healthcare facility. Both manual and automated security measures should be put in place and maintained to ensure the facility is secure at all times.
For example, in areas with extreme conditions, addressing issues related to the stability of infrastructure and regular maintenance of HVAC systems is essential in case of a weather emergency.
Generate energy efficiency
Many healthcare facilities operate 24/7, which means that all equipment requires a constant power supply. This leads to significant consumption of energy to ensure everything is working properly.
These facilities can increase energy efficiency by using smart technology tools that automatically track and control high-energy consumption systems. These tools will also identify areas to upgrade to safe energy. Some upgrades may include using high-efficiency HVAC systems, replacing light fixtures, advanced lighting control systems like LEDs, and designing buildings and rooms that allow natural lighting to save energy.
This way, the energy within a healthcare facility can be channeled to areas where it’s needed most.
Implement a proactive maintenance plan to cut costs
Preventive maintenance programs will ensure every piece of equipment is running properly. This should include regular checks, tests, and even actions that reduce the likelihood of equipment failure. Implementing a preventive maintenance strategy will allow you to reduce the downtime and the costs of reactive maintenance and extend the life of your equipment.
Invest in the right facilities maintenance platform
A holistic approach to facilities maintenance for a healthcare facility takes into account the needs of all patients, stakeholders, health care professionals, building staff, and regulatory bodies.
A revolutionized facilities maintenance platform like One by Lessen offers solutions for all your facilities maintenance needs. It allows you to keep track and manage critical asset data and implement more effective maintenance strategies, while also reducing overall reactive spending to ensure you make smarter decisions for the future of your business.