Lost Equipment, Lost Revenue: How Medical Asset Tracking Saves Hospitals Millions

The average hospital spends about $2.2 million each year on avoidable costs. The high price of misplaced or missing medical equipment means lost revenue and increased costs directly caused by:

Employee hours spent searching for equipment instead of at patients’ bedsides.

• Late fees for unreturned rental equipment

• Under-utilisation and over-ordering of standard devices like IV pumps.

Fortunately, Kontakt.io offers a medical asset tracking solution that delivers a return on investment (ROI) on day one: a real-time locating system (RTLS) with BLE tags and sensors not only improves efficiency, reduces waste, and ensures the availability of critical devices for patient care, but it also increases device utilisation and “right-sizes” your inventory so you can stop paying for rental devices you don’t need and even defer future purchases.

Understanding Medical Asset Tracking: How RTLS Works

Digital medical asset tracking systems use a combination of BLE tags, sensors, and cloud-managed software to track and maintain every asset. BLE tags come in several sizes and forms to suit every kind of asset. Add new tagged assets at any time and increase your covered radius by installing additional sensors that read the signals each tag emits. View and manage the data from tags and sensors using the software on a computer or smartphone. RTLS can track all types of assets:

• IV pumps

• Routine supplies

• Medical devices

• Equipment

• Medications

• Wheelchairs

• Patient beds

Speed up everyday asset tracking while reducing errors with RTLS. Having a stable inventory of available assets for all departments to access as needed drastically improves your daily operations and ability to deliver quality care.

Money-Saving Benefits of RTLS

Real-time asset tracking can save your hospital a significant amount of time, energy, and revenue. The RTLS applications are extensive, giving you more control over your inventory and deeper insights into how your facility functions. This knowledge allows you to adapt your operations and management strategies for greater efficiency continuously.

Track Assets in Real-time

RTLS allows staff to track every tagged asset throughout your facility in real time with room-level accuracy. View the history of each device to discover how often it’s used and which departments use the asset most often. Digital tracking systems help to eliminate many of the common errors in asset management while giving you a place to store and access data on each asset throughout its lifecycle in your healthcare system.

Streamline Quality Control

You must keep hospital assets clean and in pristine condition to provide safe and effective patient care. Staff can quickly identify the status of assets to find up-to-date equipment ready for use. They can also use tracking information to identify if an asset has recently had routine maintenance or to request equipment servicing at the touch of a button, effectively reducing equipment downtime and keeping assets in circulation for use.

Eliminate Staff Time Spent Searching for Equipment

Nurses spend a significant part of each shift searching for the equipment they require to perform their duties. This involves walking for miles and wasting time better spent on their essential job duties. When you deploy Kontakt.io’s RTLS platform, all staff can quickly locate the necessary devices and supplies, saving them time and eliminating frustration, making work shifts more enjoyable.

Reduce Equipment Loss

Asset tracking provides a simple solution to reduce the occurrence of lost or misplaced equipment. Tagging your assets means you can quickly find equipment that accidentally ended up in another department.

Discourage Theft and Hoarding

Manual asset tracking and inventory systems leave a lot of room for error. They make it difficult to keep each department stocked with supplies by need and usage. Nurses often try to compensate for these flaws by hoarding equipment. If they find a stock of commonly used supplies, they may take a few extra and hide them away for later use. This leads to over-ordering and overspending on inventory. RTLS platforms provide a better way to manage inventory. You can view in real time the number and location of each type of asset so you can keep only the needed amount on hand.

Tagging and tracking your assets also discourages theft. You can set boundaries for each asset that triggers an alarm to alert staff anytime an asset goes out of bounds. This helps to eliminate loss from patients and staff members trying to take assets outside the facility.

Manage Inventory

Poor asset visibility and distribution cause poor utilisation and equipment shortages. Right-size your inventory and stop paying for equipment and supplies you don’t need by tagging assets and making them simple to track. Use informational reports developed from asset tracking data to inform your purchasing decisions, spot trends in usage, and save money.

RTLS makes inter-department asset sharing simple. If one department runs low on a needed asset, it can easily locate a surplus in another department. You can even access data reports to identify which departments use certain assets more often to optimise the location of equipment storage.

Optimise Equipment Utilisation

Another issue with traditional asset tracking systems is underutilisation. Use your assets more efficiently with real-time tracking to increase the number of clean equipment ready for staff use. Assets spend less time out of circulation, in maintenance, or lost.

Reduce Equipment Rental Costs

You can also improve equipment utilisation with better rental tracking. Decrease your rental costs by reducing the number of late rental devices and avoid paying for lost equipment.

Improve Patient Experience and Satisfaction

A digital medical asset tracking system not only makes staff shifts more efficient, giving nurses more time to care for patients as they spend fewer hours locating equipment or performing administration tasks, but it also improves the patient experience. An RTLS platform gives your staff the ability to move patients through the care system without bottlenecks, delays, or the frustration that accompanies these interruptions. Better patient experiences lead to increased satisfaction and an improved reputation for your hospital.

RTLS Solutions from Kontakt.io

Kontakt.io’s RTLS platform integrates with your existing infrastructure for fast deployment at a low cost. You can have your new medical asset tracking system up and running in weeks or days. Our easy-to-use asset tracking tags give complete transparency on the status of all tagged equipment and devices while our AI-powered analytics provide insights to further increase your efficiency.

At Kontakt.io, we’re about more than just solving today’s problems. We also provide future-proof solutions that are highly scalable to grow with your facility without incurring high costs or disrupting your workflows.

Learn how Kontakt.io is solving current challenges in healthcare with digital technology that optimises your daily operations and saves you millions in avoidable costs. Sign up to view our webinars on demand to find out more, or contact us with your questions.