Asset management in hospitals: the positive impact of tracking and keeping your monitor fleet up-to-date

Executive summary

From bedside and transport monitors to the central stations and networks that connect them all, patient monitoring devices are critical for providing safe, effective, timely care in hospitals. This means that when these monitors go missing, are misplaced, or are simply not maintained properly patient safety is compromised. 

Additionally, a lack of focus on asset management can increase costs and steal the time staff could better spend on patient care, significantly reducing the efficiency of hospital operations.

In this article, we will delve further into the problems that healthcare systems grapple with, diving into their negative impact on patients, employees, and financial considerations. 

We'll also examine the technologies smart hospitals can leverage in order to enable centralized maintenance and real-time monitoring of equipment. By utilizing these tech-savvy asset management solutions, healthcare systems worldwide can benefit from improved staff productivity, reduced expenses of lost equipment, increased patient safety, and the ability to make more informed financial decisions.

The invisible crisis of missing monitors

It’s 2:14 a.m. in the ICU. The monitor that is acting as a lifeline for a patient, providing information their physicians need to make critical decisions for their care goes down. Yet, when the nurse rushes to grab a backup, there’s not one available due to the fact that specific software configurations don’t meet the requirements for that particular unit. This means the backup lifeline that patient requires simply isn’t available.

Unfortunately, his isn’t just a one-off incident. It happens all the time in hospitals around the world—critical monitoring equipment often goes missing, is misplaced, or is just sitting idle because it wasn't maintained when it should have been.

To illustrate how large the problem truly is, let’s take a look at the conclusions from just a handful of references:

• HIMSS & GE Healthcare (2021)¹.
  “A study conducted by GE Healthcare found that nurses spend an average of 21 minutes per shift searching for lost equipment.”
• 24x7 Magazine (2019)².
  “Searching for missing or misplaced medical equipment has cost U.S. hospitals $14 billion in lost productivity annually.”
• Chief Healthcare Executive (2022)⁴.
  “Hospitals lose millions of dollars each year due to missing or stolen medical equipment, which delays care and wastes staff time.”
• Tucker, Ann L., et al. (2010)⁵.
  “Operational failures, such as missing supplies and malfunctioning or misplaced equipment, consumed on average 10% of a nurse’s shift.”
• GCX (2022)⁶.
  “When preventive maintenance is delayed or skipped, medical devices often sit idle or unavailable, increasing the risk of downtime during critical need.”
• Relegen (2023)⁹.
  “Hospitals face an ongoing challenge of preventing equipment loss, with misplaced assets causing treatment delays and financial waste.”
• Clayden & Gagnon (2016)¹¹.
  “In two American hospitals, the cost of lost and stolen equipment was estimated at $300,000–$400,000 annually, or about $4,000 per hospital bed.”

For those leading hospitals and senior clinicians, this crisis takes a toll on how efficiently things run, it drives costs up, and, let’s be honest, it puts patients at risk. But here’s the silver lining: with modern asset management systems that emphasize real-time visibility and centralized upkeep of patient monitors, we can turn this issue into a real opportunity for improvement.

Locating the equipment: lost time, lost lives

Finding the right monitoring device when it matters most is critical, yet challenging for many healthcare teams. Consider the daily chaos on a hospital floor, where dozens of portable monitors move between wards, emergency rooms, and operating theaters. Without real-time location tracking, nurses often spend up to 21 minutes per shift searching for equipment¹,²—minutes better spent attending to patients. 

Hospitals routinely over-purchase equipment to compensate for equipment that’s effectively invisible. A VUEMED case study on specialty departments in U.S. teaching hospitals found that in interventional and procedural departments, supply purchases exceeded usage by 20% to 40% in dollar value, even when case volume remained constant—indicating over-purchasing and resulting in excess inventory³. This data reflects real-world monitoring and supply use patterns, highlighting how over-ordering leads to unnecessary cost and waste.

It’s also important to note that lost and stolen equipment costs U.S. hospitals as much as $4,000 per bed per year¹¹. Misplaced or lost devices become hidden costs that compromise care and waste precious capital. 

Why monitors go missing

Monitors are sometimes relocated to non-clinical areas, reducing availability where they’re most needed. These issues can occur when:

• Essential components like cables or small parts can become separated, rendering otherwise functional monitors unusable.
• In an effort to quickly locate devices in their floor or care area, staff may store monitors near stations for quick access, limiting broader availability across units.
• Patients or visitors may unintentionally take equipment home, leading to inventory gaps (an issue less likely to apply to traditional, larger devices).

These common scenarios happen all too often. They also clearly highlight the complexity of monitor management, as well as the urgent need for effective tracking solutions - ones that ensure equipment is always available and ready to go for patient care.

Missing monitors lead to hospital-wide effects

The consequences of not being able to locate a monitor the moment it's needed don't end at the patient bedside. Instead, they ripple across the hospital, resulting in system-wide issues:

• When a monitor is missing, nursing staff needs to take valuable time away from caring for patients and instead must spend time searching for missing equipment. This is a problem that research shows leads to increased burnout and job dissatisfaction²,⁵.
• Patients experience delays in monitoring, raising the risk of undetected deterioration.
• Missed maintenance and software updates on untracked devices may jeopardize safety and compliance.

Without knowing where your monitors are, the entire hospital system loses — financially, operationally, and clinically.

The financial impact of poor asset management

Although they are frequently concealed in routine tasks, the financial consequences of inadequate monitor asset management can be staggering.

Lost time looking for monitors

Globally, the 21 minutes that nurses miss each shift looking for equipment adds up to billions of dollars in lost productivity per year¹,².

This wasted time is a missed chance to enhance patient outcomes and improve clinical efficiency.

Over-purchasing and capital expense

Lacking confidence in monitor availability, hospitals often purchase excess devices to “cover” shortages. For example, a mid-sized hospital with 300 beds may overinvest hundreds of thousands in monitors that remain underutilized⁸. This spend could be redirected to hire additional staff, enhance staff training or advance care delivery.

Financial benefits of real-time location systems

Implementing real-time location systems (RTLS) can result in significant returns on investment (ROI) in the following ways:

• Reducing the cost of lost monitors - The incidence of lost monitors can drop by 2–5%, recovering tens of thousands of dollars in capital expenditures annually⁸;
• Improving utilization - Hospitals can increase equipment utilization by 10–15% with these solutions in place, which also lowers rental and replacement costs⁴;
• Improving clinical efficiency - The time needed for patient treatment decisions can be decreased when monitors are easily accessible, well-maintained, and functional, increasing revenue opportunities.
• AI-based zone tracking using BLE - Forward-thinking healthcare systems are now able to leverage technologies that offer nearly flawless zone-level monitoring accuracy even in crowded hospital settings with intricate layouts. This is facilitated by combining Bluetooth Low Energy with artificial intelligence¹¹.

The decision to engage in intelligent monitoring asset management offers executive teams a clear path to higher profit margins and better patient care.

Real-world implementations: global lessons in monitoring asset management

Hospitals worldwide have already begun to leverage the power of asset management to ensure their monitors are where they are needed, when they are needed, and ensure the updates and maintenance necessary have been properly performed.

High-income environments

During COVID-19, Orillia Hospital in Ontario was asked to open 40 beds and needed an infusion pump for each bed¹². They used their Encompass RTLS System to locate 28 pumps that were sitting unused in the hospital.  This resulted in a 70% reduction in the need to purchase new pumps, while also ensuring readiness for the new program within just 24 hours¹².

Middle-income settings

Australian hospitals save roughly AU$64 million each year by utilizing asset tracking to minimize loss and maximize monitor sharing during peak demands⁹.

Environments with limited resources and low incomes

Remote clinics with limited resources have utilized Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) RTLS solutions to guarantee the availability and upkeep of equipment such as bed mattresses, significantly lower equipment downtime and enhance clinical reliability¹⁰.

These examples demonstrate that hospitals around the world may accomplish safer, more intelligent monitoring with the correct technologies and procedures.

Maintaining patient-readiness in monitors via preventive and predictive maintenance

While monitors are required for safe, effective patient care, simply having a monitor on-hand is insufficient. That's because in addition to being available for use, that monitor must also be dependable, calibrated, up-to-date and compliant. The frequently invisible foundation of safe monitoring is maintenance.

Why preventive maintenance matters

To prevent unexpected malfunctions, scheduled maintenance—such as battery replacement, sensor calibration, cleaning, and software updates—is crucial. Preventive maintenance prolongs the useful life of monitors, lowers the need for expensive repairs, and minimizes downtime. Even one transport monitor going down unexpectedly during a crucial event in a busy hospital might lead to critical impacts to patient care and safety.

Enhancing monitor care: a shift to proactive predictive maintenance

Proactively maintaining monitors is a more effective approach than waiting for a full breakdown, which can be disruptive to care teams and increase costs. This is even more important for monitors, which play a vital role in patient safety and guiding treatment decisions. 

Fortunately, there are advanced technologies available that allow hospitals to predict when a monitor might need maintenance before it fails by tapping into real-time data for the devices. These solutions use centralized fleet management software, combining utilization trends, error logs, and device properties and metrics with the ability to deploy changes to devices remotely, so biomedical teams can:

• Schedule maintenance and deploy software updates or patches during periods of low use, minimizing care disruption;
• Standardize device configurations by care area to ensure a consistent user experience for clinical staff
• Organize their fleet of monitors by department, care area or floor and
• Be alerted of device errors and faults, allowing for proactive troubleshooting and repair.

Compliance and accreditation

Hospitals must verify completion of routine maintenance and device updates as part of their certification requirements. . This means that poor asset management could lead to higher risk of non-compliance, which could endanger patient trust and hospital licensing.

Therefore, an efficient, proactive maintenance strategy, using a predictive maintenance schedule, supports regulatory compliance and uninterrupted operations, while ensuring patients continue to receive safe, reliable care.

Additional advantages of asset management assisted by monitoring

Beyond simply managing monitors, technology-driven asset management improves clinical workflows and strengthens adherence to regulatory requirements. 

Emergency response and surge capacity

In a crisis situation, seconds matter and the importance of being able to immediately access the monitors that allow clinicians to quickly and accurately detect changes in patient condition cannot be overstated.
When hospitals know where each and every monitor is located in real-time, they are able to quickly redeploy them to high-need locations during emergencies, such as infectious disease epidemics or mass casualty events. This ability can save lives.

Alarm management integration

By guaranteeing that only operational, correctly configured monitors emit alerts, monitoring platforms that are integrated with alarm systems can help lessen alarm fatigue.

Enhancements to staff workflow

Relieving employees of time-consuming equipment searches improves job satisfaction and lowers burnout to support employee retention.

Compliance and audit readiness

Easily accessible maintenance logs and software update tracking support regulatory audits, reducing administrative overhead and risk.

In effect, modern monitoring asset management becomes a cornerstone of operational resilience and workforce sustainability.

Technology at work: the key to simplifying monitor asset management

New technologies can ease the burden of monitor asset management for healthcare systems. However, it’s important to choose solutions that offer clear improvements in two vital areas: service and cybersecurity.

Service

• Update availability – Monitors should be capable of receiving upgrades to the latest software.
• Multi-monitor capabilities – This offers improved efficiency in software updating, including installing. Additionally, this can ensure licenses and information systems certificates to multiple monitors at a time.
• Network printing – Expanded compatibility for network and PDF printing improves ease of use, efficiency and asset management.
• Device tracking – Passive RFD tags work in concert with Fleet Management software solutions to better support device tracking.

Cybersecurity

• Secure technology – Technology utilized must protect patient data and device integrity and ensure that devices are safe and operational.
• Data encryption – Data must be encrypted at transit and in-wire, with advanced encryption on air.
• Superior password management – Added configuration possibilities can allow service and biomed engineers to set and improve password complexity policies
•  

Conclusion: Leading the Way to More Proactive and Intelligent Asset Management for Monitors

In order to provide the highest level of patient care, while controlling operating expenses, hospital leaders must ensure make monitoring-centric asset management a core strategy. When every monitor is in place, kept up to date, and prepared to work:

• Impacts to patient care are minimized as monitors are up to date and ready to go for patient care;
• Staff productivity and job satisfaction increases as the time consuming challenge of searching for equipment decreases.
• Equipment loss is prevented, utilization is improved and operating costs are lowered
• Regulatory and accreditation compliance is simplified.

With these benefits in mind, hospital administrators worldwide must lead the way and embrace asset visibility and maintenance monitoring as the essential components to patient care and financial viability they are. By investing in state-of-the-art RTLS, centralized fleet management technology, and predictive maintenance strategies that guarantees every monitor is present and operational when needed, hospitals create care environments that are safer, more efficient, and financially stable.

References

1. HIMSS and GE Healthcare. Applying RTLS Technology to Improve Nurse Efficiency and Patient Care. HIMSS, 2021.
2. “Nurses Searching for Equipment Led to $14B in Lost Productivity.” 24x7 Magazine, 2019, https://24x7mag.com/management/equipment-management/nurses-searching-for-equipment-led-to-14b-in-lost-productivity/.
3. VUEMED. (2016). How leading hospitals gain the best value from optimized inventory management and supply spend. Value Analysis Magazine. Retrieved August 26, 2025, from https://valueanalysismag.com/how-leading-hospitals-gain-the-best-value-from-optimized-inventory-management-and-supply-spend/?utm_source=chatgpt.com. “The Hidden Costs of Missing Medical Equipment.” Chief Healthcare Executive, 2022, https://www.chiefhealthcareexecutive.com/view/hidden-costs-of-missing-medical-equipment-viewpoint.
4. Tucker, Ann L., et al. “Operational Failures and Their Effect on Nurse Time.” Health Services Research, vol. 45, no. 5 Pt 1, 2010, pp. 1480–1502, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2941645/.
5. GCX. “Preventive Maintenance for Medical Devices.” GCX, 2022, https://www.gcx.com/preventive-maintenance-for-medical-devices/.
6. Yoo, Sooyoung, et al. “Real-Time Location System-Based Asset Tracking in the Healthcare Field: Lessons Learned from a Feasibility Study.” BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, vol. 18, no. 1, 2018, p. 80. Springer, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-018-0656-0.Dewey, Caitlin. “Carolina HealthCare System RTLS Deployment.” Wired, 2007, https://www.wired.com/2007/11/spime-watch-hug/.
7. Relegen. “Preventing Equipment Loss in Australian Hospitals.” Relegen, 2023, https://www.relegen.com/blog/preventing-equipment-loss-hospitals-emergency-services/.
8. 3Pillar Global. “IoT Solutions in Low-Resource Hospitals.” 3Pillar Global, 2022, https://www.3pillarglobal.com/insights/blog/internet-of-things-iot-hospital/.
9. Garcia, Miguel, et al. “BLE and AI for RTLS Accuracy.” arXiv, 2019, https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.10554.
10. Simbo AI. “Predictive Battery Management in Healthcare Asset Tracking.” Simbo AI, 2023, https://www.simbo.ai/blog/predictive-battery-management-healthcare-asset-tracking/.
11. Clayden, N., & Gagnon, M.-P. (2016). Documentation and investigation of missing health care equipment: The need to safeguard high-priced devices in health care institutions. Journal of Hospital Administration, 5(6), 52–58. https://doi.org/10.5430/jha.v5n6p52
12. GE HealthCare data collected in March 2021 by leveraging Encompass RTLS technology.  This is used for illustration purposes and may not be replicable at all hospitals.