Topics: Revenue Cycle Management, Practice Management
Your medical practice likely dedicates a portion of your budget to medical supplies, prescription medications, various pieces of equipment, and other pertinent materials needed to deliver great care to your patients. These healthcare assets are critical to your medical practice since working without them can burden your staff and slow everything down.
If your medical practice has been struggling to keep track of the locations of your inventory and wants to optimize the process of ordering medical supplies, then healthcare asset tracking might be a powerful resource to leverage.
With healthcare asset tracking, you and your staff can quickly locate items, ensure they’re in the appropriate conditions, and save time and money. Keep reading to learn more about the benefits of tracking your inventory and assets!
Quick Links:
- What Is Healthcare Asset Tracking?
- Why Is Healthcare Asset Tracking Important? 3 Benefits to Consider
- How Healthcare Asset Tracking Supports Your Practice Operations
What Is Healthcare Asset Tracking?
Healthcare asset tracking and healthcare asset management entail the coordination and maintenance of medical devices, equipment, machinery, property, and more. Since a medical practice or another type of healthcare setting has so many moving parts and pieces, a healthcare asset can be almost anything, including staff and patients.
Assets can be physical and intangible, including:
- Medical Machinery
- Healthcare Equipment
- Prescription Medication
- Biohazard and Medical waste
- Employees
- IT hardware
- Patient documents
- And more!
Healthcare asset tracking and management is an important component of optimized medical practices since having an awareness of the amount, condition, and location of each asset is vital to efficient operations.
Why Is Healthcare Asset Tracking Important? 3 Benefits to Consider
Healthcare asset tracking is important because it ensures your medical practice can run as smoothly as possible; every task that could have been avoided with having better information takes away your and your staff’s attention to patients or other important matters.
In fact, one study conducted in 2018 found that nurses waste up to 6,000 hours of time each month by tracking down lost equipment. This is a huge amount of time that could have been better spent delivering care or working on more critical projects.
That’s why healthcare asset tracking is important; with an effective tracking system, your medical practice can:
Save Time and Money
Instead of your staff spending thousands of hours tracking down equipment or other vital items that keep your medical practice running, they can keep their attention and focus on tasks that align with your practice’s mission. With the power of an asset tracking system, you’ll save time and money by not having to hunt down misplaced items. Your daily workflows become streamlined with the ability to keep track of your healthcare assets and gain insight into their usage patterns, environmental conditions, and more.
Easily Locate Equipment
How often do you or your staff go on a wild goose chase to find a piece of equipment that was placed in the wrong closet? Or you’re not sure if a patient was sent home with a medical device that needs to be updated? Healthcare asset tracking means that you’ll know instantly where your devices are and what condition they’re in. This helps you make informed decisions about asset allocation, maintenance needs, and more.
Increase Supply Chain Stability
Utilizing a healthcare asset management system means you’ll gain insight into the supply and quality of your various assets. This empowers you to know when you’re getting low on a type of medical supply and results in your staff being able to order more. When your medical practice is on an efficient asset management plan, you can stay one step ahead of the supply chain issues by ordering equipment and materials before you run out, which helps buy you time between using your current stock and replenishing later.
How Healthcare Asset Tracking Supports Your Practice Operations
The saying goes that you don’t know what you don’t know—which is true, but avoidable in some situations. For example, in the context of medical practice management, there are systems and resources available to mitigate the unknown in your practice!
Healthcare asset management and healthcare asset tracking support your medical practice by streamlining your operations, empowering your staff, and optimizing your budget. By knowing the quantity, quality, and location of your various medical assets, you can plan accordingly and make changes where needed!
Instead of your staff spending precious time searching for equipment or unexpectedly running out of important medical supplies, effective asset tracking can equip your operations with the information necessary to keep running efficiently.
Optimize Your Operations with Medical Billing Services, too!
Another important component of your medical practice operations is the medical coding and billing process. This keeps your healthcare revenue cycle boosted and enables your practice to keep delivering great care to your patients—but it also has the potential to bring your revenue cycle to a halt and disrupt your operations. If you’re constantly facing rejected claims, inaccurate medical coding issues, and feel too overwhelmed to keep up with important medical billing legislation, then it’s time to partner with a medical billing service.
The experts here at NCG Medical see your practice’s success as our own, and we work as an extension of your team to comprehensively handle the medical billing and coding process! This means you and your staff can focus on what matters most: delivering great care to your patients.
