In this time of shrinking budgets and overworked staff, organizations are looking for ways to fill in or shrink the gaps between equipment safety, the need for multi-testing or repeat testing, budget shortfalls, and managing staff non-core workloads. If these service gaps are not addressed, they can lead to poor employee morale, unsure test results, and/or department budget challenges.
We believe there are 4 main equipment maintenance attributes that can be addressed thru careful planning and a proactive approach in order to address service gaps in healthcare facilities.
Safety
Equipment safety affects everyone from the staff to patients. An unsafe piece of Class 1 equipment can be ungrounded – a broken center plug tab, which can allow for current to pass thru the patient or caregiver. Other electrical safety issues can occur while equipment is plugged in during thunderstorms, grid surges and blackouts. Repeated power surges thru a piece of equipment over time can slowly affect delicate internal circuitry and burn out components.
Yearly electrical safety checks can help to identify these types of equipment issues.
Accuracy
Just like cars, delicate medical equipment components can wear out over time and with heavy use. Position sensors start to drift and internal pump parts can wear out. Lack of preventive maintenance checks can hide equipment accuracy gaps. In some cases, if the device starts to operate strangely, the staff start to loose confidence in the readings the equipment provides and will re-test patients multiple times “just to be sure”.
Yearly PM checks can identify inaccurate or drifting equipment and can give staff confidence that a device gives the correct reading, the first time.
Budget Friendly
Proactive and practical equipment maintenance programs help to prevent unexpected equipment downtime and saves budget dollars. A poorly maintained piece of equipment will cost much more to maintain in the long run vs scheduled lower-cost PM checks.
Spotting small issues early before bigger, more costly, problems occur are the hallmarks of a sensible, effective and budget-conscious approach to equipment management.
Convenient
Class-leading equipment maintenance partners usually have service offerings that reduce staff non-core workload. Client portals provide easy to access equipment test reports, historical records of maintenance performed and can easily provide a comprehensive view of maintenance activities during critical facility audits without going thru paper records or old emails. Convenient pick up and drop off services are a great time saver in terms of eliminating the need to pack and ship equipment to far away maintenance providers. Pick up and drop off also saves shipping time and loaner equipment can be delivered for use during PM checks or other more extensive maintenance.
Convenience service offerings help to close the gap between addressing patient needs and other non-core caregiver activities.
Let Acela Medical help you and your facility fill in or eliminate service gaps. Give us a call today to talk about your unique equipment maintenance service gap issues and how we can help.