Aged Care Asset Management

Aged Care Assets and Equipment Management

Hardcat works very closely with retirement villages and aged care homes to help achieve compliance and governance. Our many years of experience have taught us that the real challenge lies not in choosing a software solution but rather in ingraining sound asset maintenance and management practices.

Asset managers need to be exceptionally meticulous and devoted since any challenges in compliance and maintenance could potentially lead to loss of licence to operate. It is important to track assets and equipment as vital for not only workplace safety, but by tracking shared equipment more efficiently and effectively, it’s possible to maintain safety and compliance goals while reducing resources spent managing your program.

Companies of all sizes are subject to scrutiny, either via government agencies, regulatory boards and/or investors. So, accountability and transparency are key. The fact for aged care is that non-compliance and a lack of maintenance records could lead to problem assets and non-compliance, which could lead to injury or death of their guests, jeopardising the entire organisation.

Best Practice in Aged Care Asset Management

Managing assets and equipment is a challenge that increases as your organisation grows. Smart managers recognise that a great product or service alone isn’t enough. Properly managing an organisation’s assets and operations is key to sustaining growth. Your asset management processes require the best tools, systems, and practices to stay on top of things. Your software solution should (out of the box) be:

1. Flexible and user friendly
2. Ability to scale up efficiently as your service grows
3. Responsive to changes in business conditions, technological developments and asset acquisitions or divestments
4. Include a way to track the physical location, utilisation, performance and value of an organisation’s assets
5. Should include the capability to communicate real-time information using sensors
6. Be able to coordinate actions across different business units and locations
7. Manage your important maintenance requirements

Properly maintaining your assets is important, but “asset management” is different, and extends your options. It’s the difference between deciding whether to own a building or rent one, or whether to fix a vehicle or trade it in for a new one. In short, asset management refers to the decisions managers make about where and how to invest company money.

There are at least five such risks that primarily contribute to an organization’s failure to optimally manage their assets: 1) not knowing what they have; 2) over or under maintenance; 3) improper operation; 4) improper risk management; and 5) sub-optimized asset management systems.

The five biggest risks to effective asset management

Asset Management Goals

Asset managers have a fiscal responsibility to shareholders and stakeholders to ensure that the investments made in the organisation’s assets produce the best return on investment protect the assets, and keep guests, visitors, personnel and the environment safe. A properly funded asset management system should:

• Support safe, reliable and stable facility operations
• Support the lowest life cycle cost and risks
• Support the design of new processes and facilities using the lowest total cost of ownership best practices

Keep everything together

If you store and attach information against your assets in an asset register such as work approvals, images and documents (to the asset or its part(s)) you have a complete overview. This will help you provide management with informed decisions on how best to approach maintenance.

Audit trail and overall security

Advanced audit trails help you to meet record-keeping requirements. An audit trail that tracks and records every detail of every action is fantastic when justifying the security and integrity of your business data. Add to this, permission-based access and you have a system that ensures confidential information can be viewed only by those that need to see it and safely hidden from those who don’t.

Component hierarchies (parent/child assets)

Link ‘parent/child’ assets. So important to establish hierarchical relationships and dependencies. This functionality makes it easy to accurately track and manage these hierarchical dependencies.

Global accounting

Companies operating globally need to have multi-book capabilities. To allow core asset information to be shared across books with different sets of figures, enabling compliance with both local and group depreciation policies. Track multiple warranty records, lease payments and other service contracts along with your company assets.

Reports and forecasts

Produce standard, customised and forecasting. This can be a complicated and intimidating process, especially without the right tools for the job. Standard and customised reporting and forecasting templates allow quick access to and extraction of data. Quick and advanced filters make it easy to generate reports and graphs on just the items you need.

Communication and transparency

Streamline business processes by using a central ‘single source of truth’. With Cloud and Web-based asset registers (with security control), you can access your asset data from anywhere, across multiple departments. A central asset register will provide information in a consistent and easy format for all your locations.

Insurance premiums

Don’t pay insurance for assets you no longer own. The majority of businesses are actually overinsured, with less than 40% of assets on the register easily identified during a physical audit and an estimated 20% no longer in existence.

Identify and track maintenance

Generate work orders automatically (scheduled or manually from service requests). Mobile work orders via tablets and mobile phones will keep your service crews ‘in the field’.

Hardcat Asset Management Software

In your industry, there is no room for error. You need to know and control your assets and provide a high level of service and safety for your guests. The healthcare and aged care sectors are some of the most highly regulated industries in the world. Good governance, compliance and risk mitigation are critical to your business. Your employees rely on having the right equipment in good condition for those that they serve.

Hardcat solutions automate processes and ensure the accuracy of your asset data (maintained through a single register of truth) for the entire organisation. No matter how many sites or where they are located our solution assists in the set-up of cyclical work orders against assets; from air-conditioners to gym equipment safety checks, hydraulic beds and cleaning and servicing requirements.

We work very closely with the likes of Australian Unity – retirement and living villages and aged care facilities where we:

• Run independent projects for ‘tagging and capturing all of the assets at any new or existing facility either as they are just built, or afterwards. Creating a valid register of all their assets that will fall under a maintenance regime to ensure compliance
• Provide services to set up their cyclical work orders against these assets. Which include cleaning, location and condition of lifts/hoists, shared medical equipment and safety checks for hydraulic beds and servicing requirements

Hardcat software provides mobility through our web application and audit tools, as well as MiCatX smartphone apps that allow you to manage work orders, audits, safety checks and much more.

Mobile tracking technology

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Hardcat Aged Care Asset Management PDF

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