Selecting a computerized maintenance management system.

Computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) are required to manage and control asset, plant, and equipment maintenance in today’s hospitals. A CMMS is much more than just a way to schedule preventive maintenance (PM). By using a CMMS, you can create equipment logs to record events associated with a piece of equipment; create work orders automatically according to a schedule or manually from service requests; record authorized uses of equipment; and track scheduled services or PMs, training, maintenance history, employee time, downtime of a device, parts inventory, purchase orders, and much more. Last year, the Biomedical and Engineering Department at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, CT, started an evaluation of CMMS available for hospitals. The current system in place was outdated and difficult to use. Many of the repairs completed by technicians were not associated with a time charge, the old system wasn’t keeping track of the hours spent fixing a device or performing a PM, and there was need for additional software to run weekly and monthly reports. While multiple repairs were completed, no work orders were created and the need for an updated system became more obvious by the day.