Enhancing Patient Safety: Streamlining Ventilator Maintenance in ICUs
Client Overview
A leading hospital with a specialized ICU unit, focusing on critical care and patient safety. The ICU is equipped with advanced ventilators that are essential for patient survival, especially during respiratory emergencies. The hospital faced challenges in maintaining the ventilators on time, ensuring equipment uptime, and managing technician resources effectively.
Challenges
- Inefficient Maintenance Scheduling and Dispatch:Ventilator maintenance tasks were assigned manually, causing delays in critical maintenance procedures and increased downtime for equipment.
- Limited Visibility of Technician Locations and Job Status: Without real-time tracking of technician locations, it was difficult for the hospital’s management to optimize technician dispatch, leading to inefficient resource allocation.
- Lack of Real-Time Communication with ICU Staff: ICU staff were not always informed about the exact time of maintenance or repair, which affected workflow and patient care.
- Paper-Based Tracking of Maintenance: Maintenance activities were tracked on paper, leading to delays in updates, missed service records, and inaccurate reporting, which impacted patient safety.
Solutions Implemented
- FieldAx Platform Integration: The hospital adopted the FieldAx platform to automate scheduling and dispatching of ventilator maintenance tasks in real-time. This allowed the maintenance team to stay on top of regular servicing and urgent repairs.
- Technician Tracking: Using GPS-enabled tracking, the hospital was able to monitor the technician’s location, ensuring timely arrival and reducing downtime for ventilators. The system also allowed for more efficient assignment of tasks based on technician proximity.
- Automated Notifications and ICU Staff Communication: FieldAx automated notifications to ICU staff, informing them about maintenance schedules, technician arrival times, and completion of tasks. This kept the team in the loop and allowed them to prepare accordingly, ensuring minimal disruption.
- Digital Maintenance Reporting: Technicians used FieldAx’s mobile app to digitally log all maintenance details, which were instantly updated in the central system. This reduced errors and enabled easy tracking of service history for each ventilator.
Results
- Reduced Maintenance Delays: The integration of technician tracking and automated dispatch reduced maintenance delays by 30%, ensuring ventilators were serviced on time and downtime was minimized.
- Increased Equipment Uptime: With optimized scheduling and real-time technician updates, the hospital saw a 25% increase in ventilator uptime, ensuring continuous support for critical patients.
- Enhanced Patient Safety: By ensuring timely maintenance and reducing delays, patient safety improved, with fewer equipment failures and interruptions to patient care.
- Improved Coordination with ICU Staff: Automated updates allowed for better coordination between the maintenance team and ICU staff, improving workflow and response time during critical care.
By integrating FieldAx into their maintenance processes, the hospital was able to streamline operations, improve technician efficiency, and enhance patient safety. The automation of scheduling, real-time tracking, and digital reporting created a more reliable and efficient workflow, reducing operational delays and maintaining critical equipment for patient care.