What Is a Modern Healthcare Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS)?

Most hospitals today use some form of computerized maintenance management system, or CMMS. Many of those systems used today are legacy CMMS solutions that primarily handle work order management and do not integrate with other systems throughout the organization, leading to a cycle of waste and redundancy.

To keep current, healthcare systems need to modernize their CMMS to improve mobile capabilities, enhance reporting and analytics and automate workflows within and between departments. It is also critical that the CMMS be able to manage cybersecurity initiatives, Alternative Equipment Maintenance (AEM) programs, equipment capital planning, and the complete asset lifecycle — going far beyond simple work order management.

A truly modern healthcare CMMS can connect and transform your Healthcare Technology Management (HTM), Healthcare Facilities Management (HFM), Supply Chain, and IT departments to improve the patient experience and ensure ongoing compliance with policies, laws, and regulations.

Common Challenges Hospital Operations Face

Healthcare organizations face increasingly difficult financial and operational challenges. While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to take a heavy toll on America’s healthcare infrastructure and operating margins, there are also growing concerns about cybersecurity risks and the effects of an aging technician workforce.

Rocky Hospital Margins

Prior to COVID-19, hospital operating margins were at 1.7%, well below the 2.5% considered sustainable, according to Modern Healthcare. Hospitals have been and continue to be plagued by financial pressures from rising expenses, staffing shortages and inflation.  As of August 2024, hospital operating margins have improved somewhat while health system operating margins remain low. According to Strata’s Monthly Healthcare Industry Financial Benchmarks  (August 2024), the median hospital operating margin has improved to 4.9% in August 2024 while the median health system operating margin is considerably lower at 1.9%.

Aging Clinical Engineering Technician Workforce

Hospitals and clinics across the country are facing the problem of an aging clinical engineering technician workforce. There may soon be a shortage of technicians to maintain and service the growing pool of critical clinical engineering equipment, and not enough young professionals are entering the field. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2022 data), the median age of medical equipment repairers is approximately 44.5 years. While the aging workforce remains a concern, efforts are being made to attract younger professionals through educational programs and incentives.

Cybersecurity Risks

There are roughly 50 billion cybersecurity exposures each year through medical devices. Medical equipment is increasingly intelligent and interconnected, leading to cybersecurity risks that legacy CMMS healthcare software just cannot handle.

There is an average of 6.2 vulnerabilities per medical device. Recalls have been issued for critical devices like pacemakers and insulin pumps, with known security issues. As of January 2022, 53% percent of connected medical devices and other internet of things (IoT) devices in hospitals had known critical vulnerabilities, according to the United States Government Accountability Office.

In 2023 alone, the healthcare sector experienced a record-breaking 133 million patient records breached, a significant increase from the 51.9 million breached in 2022, according to the HIPAA Journal. For comparison, 45.9 million records were breached in 2021, reflecting a continuing upward trend in healthcare data breaches. This marks a dramatic rise since 2018, when only 15 million records were compromised. Over just five years, the number of breaches has skyrocketed, highlighting the growing threat of cyberattacks on healthcare systems and the increasing vulnerability of sensitive patient data.

In addition to these challenges, healthcare systems often face:

• Lack of real-time visibility into equipment inventory, asset tracking, and work order history.
• Insufficient understanding of the true cost of ownership of medical assets to make optimal asset management decisions.
• Data gaps hindering support for Alternative Equipment Maintenance (AEM) programs.
• Perceived medical equipment shortages often prompting unneeded equipment rentals or purchases.
• Low utilization rates, with equipment only being used at a fraction of its potential.
• Delayed equipment and service requests causing patient safety and compliance problems.
• Lack of accurate reliability data to drive the best medical equipment selection.
• Inefficient workflow systems, leading to failure in consistently focusing on high-priority work.
• Frequent reactive maintenance rather than preventive maintenance and service requests.

This leads to inefficiency, decreased revenue and lack of regulatory compliance. A modern healthcare CMMS can help address these issues.

Advantages of a Modern CMMS Software Solution

One of the most important advantages of using a modern CMMS is adhering to ever-changing government regulations and maintain high standards during performance audits required by regulatory agencies, such as The Joint Commission, CMS and DNV GL.

A healthcare CMMS helps collate all vital information and generate accurate reports for audits. It also safely stores all the required preventive maintenance (PM) schedules and equipment records in an easy-to-access centralized location for quick retrieval during government audits. A modern CMMS can identify every device that is on an AEM program, run an AEM inventory report if requested by The Joint Commission, perform automated risk scoring to determine which devices should be on an AEM program, and provide ongoing monitoring to prompt for review if those decisions cause failure rates to increase.

In addition to regulatory compliance, a modern healthcare CMMS software solution will also:

• Consolidate HTM, HFM, supply chain, and IT onto one platform.
• Automate and streamline service request workflows.
• Identify and manage equipment spend more efficiently using real-world data to improve operating margins.
• Manage equipment location, servicing and distribution using real-time tracking data.
• Modernize and simplify the way technicians work with mobile capabilities.
• Build automation with drag and drop workflow and report creation.
• Automate preventive maintenance (PM) and Alternative Equipment Maintenance (AEM) programs.
• Help enhance service quality through effective Quality Management Systems (QMS). 
• Leverage native analytics for insights and better decision making.
• Optimize and automate processes with integrations built on secure APIs.
• Mitigate cybersecurity risks by proactively identifying and addressing vulnerabilities.

Why You Should Implement a Modern Healthcare CMMS

Growing competition and slashed budgets require that all hospitals and healthcare facilities work at maximum efficiency to stay competitive and compliant. Investing in a modern CMMS is the easiest way for healthcare organizations to streamline operational efficiency and increase profits while staying compliant with constantly changing policies, laws and regulations and mitigating cybersecurity risks.

For Plant/Operations Managers who want to maintain uptime, Clinical Engineers who value precise data to track asset health and automate services and equipment distribution requests, and IT departments who need detailed information and predictive analytics to ward off medical device cyberattacks, a suite of connected tools, sensors and databases in a modern healthcare CMMS can be as essential as traditional tools and test equipment.

How Does a Healthcare CMMS Increase Efficiency?

Many healthcare organizations are still operating on multiple legacy and siloed applications. A modern, consolidated healthcare CMMS will:

• Replace disparate systems, Excel sheets, and physical paperwork used for tracking, supplies, workflows and work orders.
• Consolidate HTM, HFM, supply chain and IT onto one platform.
• Improve team management with mobile access and a browser and device-agnostic user interface.
• Centralize and automate service and equipment request processes onto a single pane of glass.
• Save time and eliminate delays caused by emergency breakdowns and unavailable inventory.
• Increase the ability to track critical assets and data with real-time information.
• Manage prioritization of critical work orders.
• Leverage native analytics for insights and better decision-making.
• Enable hospitals to properly plan future capital spend for equipment and maintenance.
• Optimize and automate processes with integrations built on secure APIs.

How Does a Modern Healthcare CMMS Help with Medical Device Security?

Hospitals have hundreds of medical devices that are connected to the internet and vulnerable to attack. Properly identifying medical device and equipment security risks is critical to IT. A modern healthcare CMMS can quickly identify significant risks or gaps, and then automate and track remediation or mitigation efforts.

To mitigate cybersecurity risks, a modern CMMS will:

• Analyze and report on all medical devices, network data, and software.
• Reconcile MDS2 data and other security attributes against inventory.
• Automate workflows unique to your organization when potential security risks or gaps are found.
• Integrate with network monitoring tools to provide real-time alerts.

Using Modern Healthcare CMMS Software to Manage Preventive Maintenance

Having customizable and automated planned preventive maintenance (PM) tasks built into the CMMS makes it much easier for your technicians to quickly locate every task that must be completed and ensures they are following all the required activities. It also provides quick access to the required activities if needed for a compliance review.

One of the most important features of a modern CMMS, however, is having the necessary data to create and support a compliant Alternative Equipment Maintenance (AEM) program for your health system. While it sounds simple enough, developing an AEM schedule requires a lot from your CMMS to document compliance that legacy systems do not provide.

What to Look for in the Best Modern Healthcare CMMS Solutions

The best healthcare CMMS software solutions are mobile-enabled and web-based, managing all aspects of asset management (medical devices, facility equipment and clinical engineering equipment), work order management, financials and expenses, preventive maintenance, risk and compliance reporting, equipment distribution, and more. A modern healthcare CMMS provides:

• Full asset lifecycle management from pre-assessment and acquisition to support and final disposition, along with data insights.
• Advanced dashboards for easy visualization of critical work orders and asset lifecycle.
• Ability to scan an asset using barcodes or QR codes.
• Flexible workflow building with a configurable rules engine – without code or SQL.
• Predictive analytics to allow for AEM implementation. 
• Robust and updated capital planning data.
• Improved communication between Facilities, Operations and IT teams.
• Big data analytics for better decision-making.
• Automated parts procurement process with industry-leading vendors.
• Connect systems and automated process with out-of-the-box integrations with RTLS providers, parts vendors, product recalls and alerts, network monitoring tools, ERPs, and Time and Attendance systems.
• Proactive medical device security to protect against cyber threats.

How Accruent Can Help

Healthcare organizations that leverage advanced CMMS and asset management technology can increase utilization rates and break down operational silos. In addition, systems that employ these solutions lower associated costs, increase equipment availability, and offer patients, visitors, and staff a better experience and greater peace of mind.

Beyond technology, Accruent experts are available to evaluate your current processes and key performance indicators, highlighting step-by-step improvement recommendations to make your Healthcare Facilities and Clinical Engineering Departments strategic assets.

Contact us today to start a conversation about how Accruent can help you with your asset management needs.