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Based in Milwaukee, Wis., Aurora Health Care is Wisconsin’s largest, fully-integrated, not-for-profit healthcare delivery system. Established in 1984, Aurora has become a nationally-recognized leader in efforts to improve the quality of health care. Over 90 different communities benefit from Aurora’s integrated delivery network, comprised of 13 hospitals, over 100 clinics, and 120 community pharmacies. The 25,000 employees and 3,400 affiliated physicians who make up Aurora work together with one goal in mind — to always provide benefit to the patients and communities they serve.
Like many healthcare providers, Aurora faces enormous pressure to improve the quality of care and manage to a healthy bottom line, while maintaining an eye towards growth. Declining reimbursements and climbing capital expenses are also a reality and are continually factored into the financial and operational plans of the health system. Aurora’s not-for-profit status means that the organization cannot obtain funding through private sources or shareholders. Thus, funding quality and growth has to be the result of more innovation and efficiency at all levels of business operations.
For Patrick Trim, director of Capital Equipment Services, and his Clinical Engineering team, efficiency coupled with service value was already part of their operational day-to-day standards. Having led the centralization of all of the health system’s 44,000 pieces of mobile equipment into a single asset management solution, Trim could site numerous examples of the cost savings the health system derived from this approach. Through one single capital asset system, St. Croix Systems Asset Manager solution, Aurora’s capital equipment team is able to deploy, track and maintain assets, consolidate and evaluate vendor contracts, review asset performance, calculate total cost of ownership and useful life, and plan for and budget capital for new and replacement equipment. And because it is an enterprise-wide solution, as Aurora grows, inventory is seamlessly integrated, giving visibility to every piece of equipment owned or leased — from the enterprise, to a hospital, to a clinic. With an asset-optimization infrastructure in place, the only other place the Capital Equipment department could look to for driving greater efficiencies was through more strategic use of personnel.
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