How to Monitor Hospital Equipment Loss

Hospital equipment can be very expensive and its loss can cause interruption of health provision services and seriously impact the profitability of a facility. It is essential that all equipment can be accounted for at all times, particularly when government grants have been used to fund assets. According to research performed by the Southern Methodist University on government grant procedures, it is a standard government procedure that the whereabouts of grant funded equipment be accounted for, from acquisition to salvage.

Instructions

• 1

  Implement a centralized inventory system and give departmental managers the responsibility of accounting for the equipment in their departments. Well-qualified hospital administrators will have studied inventory control and loss management as an integral element of their studies. The inventory should document the specifics of the equipment, including its serial number, date of acquisition, purchase price, its location within the hospital and information pertaining to loss, breakages and salvage. Equipment shared between departments should be allocated a home-base location within one specific department.

• 2

  Allocate a unique serial number to each itemized asset, and tag the asset with this number. Tags should be durable and have the ability to withstand the cleaning and sanitizing processes that hospital equipment, particularly diagnostic and surgical equipment, undergoes routinely.

• 3

  Provide secure storage facilities within each department. By their very nature as public buildings, it is unrealistic to expect that losses can be stopped within hospitals, unless there are conveniently located secure storage areas, with limited access.

• 4

  Develop a managerial procedure for inventory control. This should include timelines for updating the perpetual inventory and periodic inventory audits. Hospital departments must be made aware of their responsibilities for asset management. Management responsibility might be emphasized by imposing departmental budget penalties for repeated losses.

• 5

  Investigate electronic tag and bar code options to assist in tracking inventory. High cost assets should be equipped with GPS tracking technology to assist in location and retrieval.

• 6

  Analyze equipment losses and determine if there are any obvious trends or patterns to the losses. Consider installing closed circuit television monitoring at locations where most items are lost from, so that activities in the area can be reviewed and any criminal behaviors recorded.