Does Your Hospital Have a Costly Equipment Utilization Blind Spot?

When hospital leaders receive requests to purchase additional equipment, the conversation typically follows a familiar pattern. Clinical staff report that critical devices are never available when needed. Biomedical engineering confirms frequent rental expenses. The conclusion seems obvious: the hospital needs more equipment.

As a result, hospitals invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in new infusion pumps, patient monitors, or stretchers to address these apparent shortages. Only later, when real-time location data finally sheds light on actual usage patterns, does the truth emerge: the real problem was never insufficient inventory. 

Hospitals often have more than enough equipment—they just don’t know where it is, how it’s being used, or how long it sits idle.

The Myth of “We Need More Equipment”

Without visibility into actual equipment usage, hospitals operate in the dark. Purchase decisions get made based on anecdotes rather than data, perception rather than reality. The gap between the two can be staggering, not to mention expensive.

This creates a costly cycle: hospitals buy equipment they don’t actually need, staff continue to struggle with findability issues, and the fundamental problem—lack of visibility—remains unsolved.

Clinical staff genuinely believe equipment is fully utilized because their immediate experience is one of scarcity. However, this perception often reflects a distribution problem rather than an inventory shortage. The real issue isn’t that equipment is constantly in use, it’s that available equipment is difficult to locate when needed.

RTLS Data Reveals the Truth

Real-time location services use sensors and tags to automatically track equipment throughout the facility. This provides hospitals with objective data on how equipment is actually being used, something they’ve rarely had before. 

Here are some of the most common and surprising findings:

Low Utilization Rates for High-Cost Equipment

One of the most common findings after RTLS deployment is that expensive equipment has much lower utilization rates than anyone suspected. Infusion pumps that units report as “always in shortage” might actually be used only 42% of the day. Patient monitors, bladder scanners, and other high-cost devices frequently show similar patterns.

One common issue is that equipment sits idle in patient rooms long after it’s needed—an infusion pump still connected to discontinued medication tubing, or a monitor left bedside “just in case.” To staff walking by, these devices appear to be in use. They’re not in the storage room where others might find them, and they don’t look available for redeployment. 

In reality, though, the hospital has capacity within its existing inventory that it simply can’t see or access effectively. The shortage was never about volume; it’s about visibility and distribution.

Large Portions of Inventory Sitting Idle

RTLS data frequently reveals that significant portions of a hospital’s equipment inventory remain unused for extended periods. Devices cluster in certain units, while others experience shortages. Equipment sits in storage areas or hallways, effectively invisible to staff who need it.

In one notable example highlighted in SwipeSense’s Partner Success Manager interview series, a hospital planned to purchase additional IV pumps at $2,500 per unit. However, when the team examined their asset tracking data through utilization reports, they discovered they already had sufficient pumps—staff simply couldn’t find them efficiently. This data-driven approach prevented tens of thousands of dollars in unnecessary equipment purchases.

Bottlenecks Caused by Poor Redistribution

Perhaps the most actionable insight from RTLS data is the identification of distribution bottlenecks. Units with excess devices exist alongside units experiencing shortages, sometimes on the same floor. The problem isn’t inventory gaps; it’s that equipment doesn’t flow to where it’s needed.

Traditional manual tracking methods can’t reveal these patterns with sufficient clarity or timeliness to enable corrective action. RTLS makes these imbalances immediately visible, allowing biomedical engineering and clinical staff to redistribute equipment based on actual need rather than assumption.

Utilization Data Matters More Than Inventory Counts

Hospital leaders have long focused on inventory counts as the primary metric for equipment management. How many infusion pumps does the facility own? How many patient monitors are in service? While these numbers provide a baseline, they miss the critical question: are those devices findable and available when staff need them?

Inventory does not equal availability. A hospital might own 200 infusion pumps, but if 50 are clustered in units with low current need, 30 are in maintenance, and 20 are sitting in storage areas that staff rarely check, the effective available inventory is far smaller than the raw count suggests.

This distinction has significant financial implications. Hospitals can eliminate unnecessary purchases by understanding that their challenge isn’t always volume—it can also be usage patterns and distribution. Rather than buying additional monitors when the problem is actually locating existing ones, RTLS helps facilities optimize what they already have.

The data also enables smarter maintenance and distribution decisions. Biomedical engineering teams can prioritize preventive maintenance for high-demand items, move equipment based on real utilization patterns rather than anecdotal requests, and identify devices that might be candidates for retirement or redeployment.

The Operational and Financial Impact

The benefits of utilization visibility extend across multiple aspects of hospital operations:

• Reduced rental costs: Medical equipment rental is a significant expense for hospitals. When hospitals can locate and redistribute existing equipment, rental needs decrease significantly, eliminating thousands of dollars per day in rental expenses.
• Better capital planning: Objective utilization data replaces anecdotal reports, preventing both over-purchasing and strategic under-investment.
• Reduced hoarding behavior: When staff can see real-time equipment availability and trust they can locate devices when needed, the incentive to hoard equipment “just in case” diminishes.
• Time savings: Biomedical engineering teams spend significantly less time searching for assets, freeing up capacity for maintenance, repairs, and higher-value activities.

Beyond Guesswork: Real-Time Location Services

Decades ago, hospital equipment management relied on guesswork because there was no better option. Clinical staff reported problems, leaders made their best judgment calls, and organizations hoped those decisions would stick.

That’s no longer the case. RTLS technology has moved beyond the experimental phase—it’s proven, reliable, and increasingly standard. The infrastructure is unobtrusive, implementation is straightforward, and the results deliver actionable insights that drive real operational and financial impact.

The technology exists. The ROI is measurable. For hospitals still making major equipment purchases based on perception rather than data, the question becomes: what’s standing in the way of implementing a solution that has already proven itself elsewhere?