Today, healthcare providers face more and more competitors, increased cost pressures, a growing number of elderly and chronically ill patients, and changing regulatory and quality requirements.
Healthcare reform is promoting a trend from mass to value-based healthcare with new “network” delivery models and more seamless transitions between care settings such as hospitals, outpatients, and home care. In this highly competitive and cost-intensive environment, running a hospital is particularly complex. It requires more transparency regarding quality and cost parameters to enable data-driven decision-making and process innovation.
It’s not an easy task to improve the quality/cost equation: hospitals need a lot of energy and have the infrastructure with the highest fixed costs- and many have built-in inefficiencies.
What can facility managers do?
Hospital consultancy services perform a crucial role in the transition. Improved facility management can deliver significant value, and there are challenges in many areas such as resource, service, space, and energy and quality management. Facility managers focused primarily on service delivery should improve collaboration and align strategies with technical leaders to ensure that “soft” and “hard” facility management sizes are well integrated.
Here are some ways hospital project consultants in India can improve their company’s performance:
- Ensure that buildings are up to date and work efficiently
- Track essential assets and medical equipment in real time
- Switching from reactive to preventive maintenance to minimize risk and optimize lifelong equipment costs
- Converting fixed plans and deadlines for service provision to usage-based facility management and predictive clean-up
- Support the accreditation of the hospital (e.g., by meeting the requirements for permanent access to the object site with linked status and maintenance history)
- Presenting a quality image to attract patients and medical staff (the best doctors are expecting the best facilities)
- Gain insight into land use, allocate available land and area requirements, optimize m2 usage, and support relocations
- Improve energy efficiency and reduce waste
- Increasing the comfort of patients and visitors (e.g., parking, signage, climate control)
- Monitor, ensure and record the quality
Best Practice Processes and Software Support
Existing processes must be explored throughout the facility to accommodate new requirements and become more efficient. The need to align with best practices and to be cost-effective is even more significant in cases of mergers and an enlargement of the institution. Integrated FM software can help drive standardization and can generate data for better insights into performance. In healthcare facilities, FMs should focus on best processes that meet regulatory and accreditation requirements.
IoT technology and usage data
New and affordable smart building technologies enable FMs to improve operations based on actual on-site values. From signage on the property to ample parking for visitors, to user-friendly cleaning through clicks on bathrooms, many imaginative healthcare scenarios can be used. Technological advances are turning the entire healthcare industry around.
Sensor-collected data (big data) can also be integrated with traditional data from facility management software and other data sources, providing great potential for reducing costs and improving the user experience. Facility management will follow suit and benefit from the possibility of new technologies to become even more powerful.