When you’re under the care of medical professionals, whether it’s a life and death situation or just a simple check up, are you thinking about how they manage their assets? Probably not. You are relying on these men and women to have the latest tools and equipment that can find the source of your problem or give you a clean bill of health.

As a patient, healthcare asset management isn’t something we consider when we are at the doctor’s office. But the bigger question is if the medical providers or the facility we’re visiting is managing their healthcare assets.

We all know that doctor’s offices, hospitals and clinics have multiple pieces of equipment to treat their patients. From bandaids and pharmaceuticals to MRI machines and laboratory microscopes, all of these are assets that can impact the way your doctor/nurse/tech/PA provide treatment. With an increase in the demand for healthcare and the growing types of treatments available, for facilities that are already strapped for dollars and staff, not having the tools readily available to treat patients can be a tremendous burden.

The pressure to provide excellent care is top of mind for medical staff. Searching for missing assets is not. Medical teams rely on one another to have all the equipment at the ready for patients of every age and for every malady. When time is of the essence, trying to track down a missing asset is detrimental to the patient and the team trying to treat him/her. Conditions can change in a matter of seconds and even just one minute trying to find that crucial piece of equipment that could potentially save a life could have dire consequences.

With so much to keep track of, there is a great need for more efficient hospital asset management processes. Healthcare facilities and their staff need a multi-tasking tool that makes it easy to manage locates medical equipment, provides complete access to maintenance records for each piece of equipment, and provides up to date data on each piece of equipment like where it is, who has it, and its check in/check out status. Having anytime anywhere access to this critical information makes it easier for hospital officials to always know where equipment is at all times, make more informed decisions, and keep the focus on patient care.

Implementing a healthcare asset management program provides so many benefits beyond just saving time and money. Today’s offerings are more flexible and scalable –meaning facilities can customize them for what they specifically need them to be, not what a software provider thinks they need. Large hospital facilities may have more equipment than the smaller clinic down the street. But regardless of size or number of assets, staff needs to know what they have, where it is, who has it and if it’s in good working condition. Lives depend on it.

Our asset tracking tools now come with Low Energy BLE tags which is tracked through wireless micro spots on real time. With one click, data is instantly captured about an asset. By capturing all the details on the entire lifecycle of an asset, the management platform can incorporate predictive maintenance. This allows facilities to plan for critical equipment to be assessed, reducing equipment downtime and ensuring that equipment is always at the ready to be used.

When healthcare professionals have the right tools at the right time and have confidence that devices are in working order, patient health is optimized. The less time staff has to search for and assess equipment, the more time they can spend with patients.