What Is a Healthcare CMMS and How Does It Work?

A healthcare computerized maintenance system (CMMS) is a software platform for healthcare maintenance professionals to collate and collect vital information relating to facility maintenance management. It typically handles a variety of tasks related to the maintenance and upkeep of the healthcare facilities it serves.

What is a healthcare computerized maintenance management system (CMMS)?

A CMMS healthcare platform streamlines operations and facility maintenance, allowing healthcare organizations to handle these tasks in a more efficient manner, leaving time to focus on providing quality healthcare services.

CMMS software is often deployed by facilities managers working in one of the following areas:

• Healthcare providers
• Hospitals
• Healthcare institutions
• Clinics
• Home care providers
• Medical technology manufacturers
• Medical laboratories
• Clinical engineering
• IT
• Radiology
• Laboratories
• Dental providers
• Service companies

How does a healthcare CMMS work?

Facilities managers in the healthcare space use a healthcare CMMS system to assist in maintaining facilities, organizing, automating, and scheduling tasks, and ensuring all facilities-based projects are completed in a timely, organized, and compliant manner.

The CMMS system typically handles tasks such as:

• Maintenance scheduling, tracking, and reporting
• Asset management for medical devices
• Work order management
• Streamlining workflows

Work order tracking

Healthcare CMMS software platforms help streamline the work order creation and management process. They can help you:

• Access work order and inspection details
• Use built-in compliance requirements
• Track completion times

TheWorxHub™ platform is an interconnected healthcare suite that can help you manage work orders and perform asset management tasks, giving you full capabilities in these areas and simplifying the work order process.

Compliance and safety monitoring

Compliance audits are often stressful and full of unknowns, but your CMMS puts the information you need to ensure you’re always meeting compliance standards. With user-friendly tools, compliance code tracking, and built-in workflows for preventive maintenance, you can be assured your compliance efforts will pay off.

Asset management

A sound CMMS solution will improve inventory management, ensuring you can keep track of your medical devices. It’s important for maintenance facility managers to have a strategic approach to asset management, and a good platform can help you track location and quickly search asset details. They also help ensure maintenance is up to date on all of your assets so they work properly and meet compliance requirements.

Benefits of using a healthcare CMMS

A healthcare CMMS can help improve hospital operations and streamline maintenance for your healthcare facilities. Healthcare facilities house critical assets that often are used in life-saving procedures.

A CMMS improves a healthcare organization’s operations and patient care, leading to improved operations and better patient care.

Cut operating costs

There are many ways CMMS software for healthcare helps reduce spending. Preventive maintenance greatly reduces the cost of repairing major breakdowns and replacing equipment. Reduced downtime means you’re treating more patients, and the ability to maximize budgets means you’re able to find areas you’re spending unnecessarily.

Schedule preventive maintenance

Preventive maintenance is a key factor in keeping costs low for any healthcare facility. Medical equipment is costly, and without the proper upkeep you can quickly find yourself with a rather expensive box full of spare parts. With an automated preventive maintenance schedule, your CMMS helps you keep track of which equipment needs maintenance, ensuring your devices have a long life.

Increase productivity

CMMS automation reduces manual processes like processing work orders, data entry, and maintenance scheduling, reducing the necessary employee hours necessary to maintain compliance. This means your employees can work on more important tasks like patient care, not on paperwork.

Improve patient experience

Having an organized, smooth-flowing facility increases the patient experience.  Maintenance management software helps ensure equipment works properly and processes are smooth and seamless. This means employees are free from and not frustrated by inefficiencies and unreliable equipment, and patients enjoy a stress-free, patient-focused environment.

Audit preparation

A good CMMS platform keeps track of compliance regulations and requirements, capturing real-time data that allows you to access reports whenever you need them. This ensures you have the tools you need to ensure your compliance audits are successful.

Four things to consider when looking for a CMMS for your healthcare organization

Healthcare facilities management can be a complex, time-consuming process without the proper guidance to go with your software package. But if you know what you’re looking for, you can smoothly integrate your CMMS software for healthcare and keep your facility running like a well-oiled machine.

These four points can help you ensure you’re investing in the best healthcare CMMS possible.

Is the CMMS designed specifically for healthcare?

There are a lot of CMMS solutions available, but healthcare’s unique challenges, compliance requirements, and regulations require a platform designed specifically for healthcare organizations. TheWorxHub by Brightly includes built-in references to The Joint Commission, DNV, life safety, and NFPA standards. This way, healthcare organizations can spend less time worrying about compliance, and more time focusing on patient care.

Can the CMMS be customized to fit your healthcare organization’s needs?

The most effective CMMS solutions are highly customizable, designed to meet your specific organizational and industry needs. A modern CMMS solution allows healthcare organizations to set and track benchmarks to optimize performance. Configurable dashboards allow users to track the data that matters most to their organization, such as work order status, asset inventory, or site performance.

What are the healthcare CMMS deployment options?

Depending on the needs of the facility, your CMMS system can be deployed locally (on site), or on the cloud. A cloud-based CMMS with mobile capabilities empowers maintenance and operations staff with access to critical information from anywhere, but may not be necessary for some healthcare organizations, depending on its size and needs.

Does the CMMS partner provide quality training and support?

A strong implementation partner is vital to the success of your healthcare CMMS. 
Proper training is key to utilizing your maintenance management software to its fullest potential. Look into the types of resources (such as self-guided trainings and implementation support) available with any CMMS solution before making a decision.

Partner with Brightly

Partnering with Brightly to implement a healthcare CMMS means your organization is teaming up with a leading CMMS provider. With expertise in implementation and support and a complete suite of intuitive software, Brightly is an industry leader. Contact a Brightly expert to determine which solution best fits the needs of your organization.