What Are The Primary Benefits Of Using CMMS Software For Medical Clinics?

It takes a lot of resources to run a safe and compliant medical clinic and cutting corners is not an option. Transferring facilities management to a computerised system will have a positive impact on all practice operations, including lowering expenses, improving patient care, and controlling budgets.  

CMMS, or computerised maintenance management systems, are a proven strategy for increasing productivity. Traditional methods, such as spreadsheets, emails, phone calls and manual record keeping, are inconvenient, time-consuming, and prone to human error. These are significant disadvantages for medical clinic that rely on accuracy to ensure the health and safety of staff, contractors, and patients. 

CMMS software reduces human error by automating many of the facilities' management processes. For example, Ticked Off can help you automate as many as 85% of the management processes to improve accuracy and save time and resources. 

Keep reading to learn more about how a CMMS system can benefit a medical facilities management team. 

Improve Safety and Compliance 

Compliance is perhaps one of the most important areas where a medical clinic’s CMMS can have the biggest impact. Health regulations are always evolving, as are the requirements for patient care. Violating these regulations will not only endanger patients' lives, but also leaves the practice vulnerable to legal action, fines, and lawsuits.  

Equipment and facilities in a medical clinic requires periodic maintenance and cleaning. Medical facilities are a beehive of activity, often with millions of moving parts. A CMMS makes it possible to track the status and repair schedules of all clinic assets and alert management when action needs to be taken.  

The CMMS also makes it much easier to create organised reports for officials during audits and inspections.  

Improved Patient Monitoring and Care 

Medical clinics are busy places with multiple staff using many different tools to continuously monitor a patient’s health and deliver the care they need.   

Doctors and nurses rely on accurate tracking and hands-off maintenance of facilities to properly care for their patients, which is a task that is beyond even the most sophisticated spreadsheet. There's a lot of equipment to keep track of, including:  

• Surgical devices 
• Medical lasers 
• Medical imaging machines 
• Patient beds 
• Support systems 
• and many more 

Accurate maintenance and repair schedules and easy ad hoc repairs spread across hundreds of machines and building facilities, plus the thousands of employees who use them, are made possible with a CMMS system.  

CMMS systems record day-to-day, monthly, and yearly maintenance history on your workplace's machines and equipment, so you'll know what was worked on at any time. Information about repairs, reliability, downtime and labour hours spent on each device will be at your fingertips.  

Increased Efficiency Through Central Information Storage 

Computerised maintenance management software will collect all facilities-related data into a single location. This eliminates the time it takes to track essential data that is often time-sensitive in a fast-paced medical facility.  

Improve Reliability with Preventative Maintenance 

The scheduling of maintenance is an important function of CMMS software as it can help determine when maintenance is necessary. Preventative maintenance schedules reduce the risk of failure of critical machinery that can put patients’ lives at risk.   

More Efficient Maintenance Schedules 

An organised maintenance schedule eliminates wasted time, uses fewer resources, and costs less. You can plan more effectively when you can anticipate asset needs, inventory, and production schedules. 

Creating a more efficient maintenance schedule requires a deep understanding of where you stand with resources. A CMMS tool can help you track and analyse the data collected through various sensors so you can fine-tune your maintenance schedule and staff can use the equipment with more confidence. 

Reduce Human Error Through Automation 

Medical clinics are hectic places with staff that are always on the move. Human error will inevitably creep into any system that isn't automated. Work requests received by phone calls, post-it notes, or stored in spreadsheets can easily get overlooked. Outdated manual systems also take up a lot of time that could be spent doing more productive work. 

A CMMS system can automate the majority of facilities management tasks such as work requests and maintenance schedules. Connect the CMMS to sensors and you can monitor the status of equipment in real time.  

Maintenance becomes automatic as the system triggers maintenance jobs at the appropriate time. Employees no longer have to remember to manually translate work requests, track down operators, or rifle through physical copies of reports.  

Spot Trends in Maintenance Data 

Maintenance metrics enable medical facilities management teams to convert action into numbers that accurately measure equipment and staff performance.  

Your operation's performance metrics allow you to establish cause and effect so you can monitor the overall success and productivity of every action. Using a CMMS will also help you convert actions into metrics that highlight trends so your management team has detailed data to make more informed decisions.  

Reduce Time Spent Creating Reports 

Having documented maintenance KPIs helps identify serious equipment issues and observe how the facility fares against industry benchmarks. However, compiling KPI reports using Excel or pen and paper can be time-consuming.  

Reporting templates allow you to quickly collate data from different areas of your maintenance operation to create a report that's easy to make sense of. Regular reports can be automated to show up in your inbox so facilities management will always have their finger on the pulse.  

Accurately Track Historical Data 

It can be challenging to manage an asset in its entirety without fully understanding its past. Even if your management team knows everything they need to know about an asset's past, staff turnover and retirement mean the data is always at risk of being lost forever. 

 A computer software-based management and maintenance (CMMS) system keeps historical data secure and accessible. New staff can quickly get up to speed on the state of the facilities. 

 Well-designed CMMS systems will have multiple features that increase their value, but the true value is realised when those tools are used to enhance efficiency, identify problem areas, and ensure buildings and equipment is regularly maintained and repaired. Book a demo to find out more about how Ticked Off can improve your medical clinic’s operational capacity.