Facility managers in the healthcare sector are tasked with a myriad of constraints—from ageing infrastructure to staying compliant amidst constant changes to health and safety regulations to shrinking budgets. Therefore it is critical to know how every building, physical asset and system in your care is performing as well as where there are opportunities for facility optimization.

Read our guide to implementing a facility optimization strategy >

Here we discuss the ways in which Facility Condition Assessments (FCA) can improve your healthcare operational efficiency and make your job easier.

1. Provide Comprehensive List of Current State of Physical Assets

FCAs will give your team a full-spectrum understanding of the current state of all your existing facilities and physical assets. More than simply a hospital or standalone care unit, we know that today's healthcare organizations are made up of hundreds and thousands of individual components that must all be maintained as a well-oiled machine on a daily basis.

The goal of an FCA is to answer 4 critical questions:

1. What do we own?
2. What condition is it in?
3. What are the values and liabilities?
4. What is the plan for the future?

Learn how The FOUNDATION Solution simplifies and improves facility condition assessments >

Finding the answers to these questions is essential for the success of any healthcare environments. On a basic level, the FCA is a review of the material condition of assets, the ease of access outside and inside the facility, the functionality of operating equipment, the performance, estimated remaining useful life of assets based on the Building Owners and Managers Association standards and the estimate costs for repairs versus replacements.

This thorough examination of each building, system and component offers managers and executives a comprehensive view of the current state of existing facilities so that they can begin to prioritize repairs, upgrades and forecast capital investments.

Learn more about how facility condition assessments can help you save money, mitigate risk and improve efficiency. See our case study >

2. Inform Capital Planning Executives

In regards to forecasting budgets and long-term investments, the FCA is a valuable tool for healthcare organizations. Our FOUNDATION Solution can help you to streamline facility condition inspections by providing you with best-in-class workflows and costing libraries that consider industry-wide replacement value benchmarked against deferred maintenance deficiencies. This data enables executives to have a 360-degree view on the status of existing assets across all facilities.

The data collected during an FCA is a valuable tool for long-range planning. It enables executives to make decisions based on comprehensive reports and provides a strategic framework for planning future improvements.

Learn how FOUNDATION makes it easy to perform facility condition assessments >

3. Ensure Compliance

This is one of the most important aspects of a healthcare facility manager's job, and it is one of the most headache inducing and time consuming. Healthcare organizations are under constant pressure from The Joint Commission and other compliance entities to ensure that facilities meet stringent requirements for patient and staff safety. An FCA identifies potential problem areas in relation to critical life safety requirements, including emergency management procedures, sterilization and infection control, and storage of gas and other hazardous materials.

See how we helped this healthcare organization improve their disease management and infection control using our solutions. View the case study >

A facility management platform like FOUNDATION can track all of these compliance elements and recommend solutions. In addition, our platform can leverage the data from your FCA in order to develop a prioritization strategy. For example, visually, a leaky roof might seem like an urgent priority, however, an FCA identifies life safety code violations such as the improper transport and storage of hazardous chemicals, which in actual fact, is a much higher priority in regards to patient and staff safety. With the help of facility management software, it becomes easier to prioritize and analyze data points from your FCA against health and safety regulations. Therefore, you can ensure the highest quality of compliance for your entire healthcare environment.

4. Make Data-Driven Decisions Backed By Real-Time Insight

Facility assessments support everyday decision-making that are backed by real-time information and insights. Facility management platforms, like The FOUNDATION Solution, are designed to process the large amount of data collected during a facility assessment and package it into a digestible, simplified, mobile-friendly report that enables you and your management team to quickly make decisions on the fly.

See how Intellis improved Facility Condition Assessments for the New York Housing Authority >

For example, FOUNDATION, offers you a dynamic condition model of your healthcare organization's entire physical asset portfolio. This enables you to prioritize and categorize assessment data and then integrate it directly into your maintenance and capital project and budgetary planning.

The FOUNDATION Solution take this one step further with its mobile component, which allows your team to stay connected inside and outside of the office. Our mobile-enabled platform provides you with project overviews, analyses, building biographies, and deficiency condition reports. Furthermore, you can upload photos into the platform directly from the field, as well as add comments and even view estimated repair costs.

Ready to take your next healthcare facility condition assessment to the next level?

Sources

Becker's Hospital Review,"7 Factors to Assess the Sustainability of a Hospital: Assessing a Hospital’s Viability, Its Financial Situation and the Severity of the Threats it Faces". https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/7-factors-to-assess-the-sustainability-of-a-hospital-assessing-a-hospitals-viability-its-financial-situation-and-the-severity-of-the-threats-it-faces.html.

Cassata, Joseph, "Building Wellness: Top Reasons Facility Assessments are Critical for Healthcare Organizations". Medical Construction + Design, https://mcdmag.epubxp.com/i/699840-jul-aug-2016/34?m4=.

Forney, Rob and Marc Lopez, "Five steps for facility condition assessments". HFM Magazine, https://www.hfmmagazine.com/articles/3013-five-steps-for-facility-condition-assessments.

Healthcare Facilities Today, "Key issues for healthcare facility condition assessments". https://www.healthcarefacilitiestoday.com/posts/Key-issues-for-healthcare-facility-condition-assessments--8133.