“A hospital operation is heavily
impacted by both day to day management to certain levels of standards and by effective long-term asset management. With the cost of hospital medical devices rising rapidly, it’s necessary to know what you have, how it’s being used, and how it’s being maintained. After all, good data enables you to make smart, informed decisions—rather than those based on “hopes” and feelings.”
-”Efficient Asset Management” article in 24×7 Magazine. See www.eq2llc.com/category/news.
Long-Term Asset Management
Hospital equipment assets, while purchased for millions, cost many times their purchase price to maintain. With HEMS the data needed to make smart, cost-effective service, procurement, and retirement decisions is available.
The ability to see the whole picture of a single asset’s cost and compare it with similar devices, allows hospitals to make good business and operational decisions since they can see more than what’s directly in front of them – they can see the whole picture. HEMS has several ways to accomplish this such as advanced reporting and dashboards designed specifically for each of the C-Suite, directors and managers. Examples are dashboards that capture Capital Equipment Replacement Analysis, Cost of Service Ratio, failure rate, downtime, etc.
Initial acquisition cost is obvious and easy to see – like the top of an iceberg. Total lifecycle costs however amount to much more – like installation, maintenance, upgrades, repairs, downtime, etc.
HEMS Enterprise for Total Asset Management: Cradle to Grave
EQ2’s HEMS Enterprise has always helped numerous Biomed and Facilities departments manage medical devices, equipment, and other types of assets with real-time visibility as to any item’s status or by groups and sets of assets on tailored dashboards.
In recent years, Imaging, IT, EVS, and Support Services have realized numerous benefits from using the cutting-edge HEMS software in managing their departments as well.
Now, HEMS goes a step further and also helps to control costs and improve performance in Supply Chain, Procurement, Receiving, Materials Handling, Service Contracts and Vendor Management. Assets and contracts can be tracked and monitored from purchase requisition to end of life.
INTEGRATE HEMS BI-DIRECTIONALLY WITH SYSTEMS LIKE PEOPLESOFT AND LAWSON
10 Ways the Hospital Benefits……(there are many more) ……
1. Data driven Complete Equipment Lifecycle Management including identification of vendor performance problems and product performance shortcomings
2. Retirement process transparency: how each item was disposed of and whether the number of replacement units equal the number retired (and if not, the reason is noted). Also the Supply Chain departments inventory counts are in sync with each business unit’s inventory counts, including for infection control and disposal. Retirement and items histories are preserved.
3. Clear visibility into expiration and auto-renewal dates on leases, rental agreements and
service contracts
4. Responsible or user departments (Biomed, Facilities, Imaging, IT, …) can identify the status of devices
(owned, leased, borrowed, etc.) in real-time. This comports with the Joint Commission requirement to
know the status of every device in the hospital regardless of ownership
5. Better preventative maintenance scheduling for specific models based on historical data from across
all locations
6. Alerts for warranty expiration and vendor provided update or replacement offers
7. Once ECRI and vendor recalls are received, work orders can be created on all affected devices
anywhere in the hospital including multi-facility systems. As appropriate the rental/lease process
can be started to replace the affected items.
8. Improved inventory reconciliation by using a mobile device to scan barcodes of asset tags wherever
assets are located and confirm correct tags for each item to avoid “tag switch”. Stock reconciliation
interface provides varied inventory scheduling with location verification and correction features.
9. Visibility into key metrics like purchase price, costs, warranties, total cost of ownership, etc.
10. Compare the purchase price and running costs of similar and same brand assets. Aggregate
purchases, limit vendors and consolidate orders to realize volume purchasing discounts and lower
cost service contracts.
Stock and Contract Management
The Stock Management module is used to raise requisition, integrate with ERP applications, and notify of events – all so that stock is always at acceptable levels.
The Contract Management module is for analysis of ROI for contracts. This provides quick information to technicians for the devices under contract directly from their dashboard.
