(1/31/2025)
The new year is here and healthcare leaders are shaping their plans for the coming months, assessing the resources and expertise required to carry their goals across the finish line.
One thing’s for sure: The speed and magnitude of change we must navigate in healthcare demands we manage our environment of care differently. Data from hundreds of healthcare facilities, ranging from small outpatient clinics to large hospitals, points to integrated facilities management (IFM) as the best path forward for driving efficiencies, reducing costs, and supporting better healthcare delivery.
IFM differs sharply from outdated facilities management approaches in three key aspects:
- Moving from reactive to proactive
- Banishing silos and uniting all components impacting the built environment
- Leveraging integrated data to pinpoint and predict facility needs with a high degree of accuracy, even years in advance
Eliminating blind spots, inefficiencies, and question marks with holistic FM integration
Historically, various functions of the built environment have been managed by separate vendors or teams who rarely, if ever, communicate with one another. Even so, those disparate functions impact and build on one another, either hurting or helping the next, whether it’s an office renovation, a damaged ceiling, a regulatory violation, or a gas leak, to name a few.
IFM integrates those functions that have traditionally been siloed, including the following:
- Facilities maintenance
- Groundskeeping/landscaping
- Regulatory compliance and survey readiness
- Life safety
- Capital planning
By bringing these elements together under one coordinated strategy, healthcare organizations can supercharge efficiencies, shrink costs, and accelerate organizational goals. This robust strategy also enables integrated data capture, making it possible to accurately forecast facility, workforce, and spending needs, even years down the road.
Two additional IFM components postively impact organizational goals:
- Consolidated spend and buying power through a vetted national supplier network
- Labor insourcing, bringing skilled workers into client facilities, reducing reliance on costly, external contracts
On average, Medxcel client facilities embracing this IFM model save 10-15% in facilities management costs over the life of their contracts.
Looking ahead, the goals you’re working toward are inextricably connected to your built environment. In an era of rising complexity and pressure on healthcare leaders to boost efficiencies and lower costs, IFM is no longer just an option — it’s a necessity for building and sustaining better healing environments.
Looking to elevate your healthcare facilities program?
Learn why Medxcel is the largest and most trusted provider of healthcare facilities services in the U.S.