Crothall Healthcare Transforms Facilities Management at 10 MedStar Health Hospitals

Challenge

MedStar Health operates 10 acute care hospitals in the Baltimore – Washington D.C. area covering more than 10 million square feet. Hospital administrators felt its previous Facilities Management provider lacked a sophisticated data and analytics solution to properly manage and maintain all non-medical equipment and the system’s infrastructure. In January 2020, MedStar Health hired Crothall to provide Facilities Management (FM) at all locations to improve maintenance, upgrade the performance of its facilities, and ultimately help it improve patient care.

Results

Improved Patient Care.
The implementation of Crothall’s FM eliminated key equipment failures, outages, and other interruptions, enabling the clinical staff to provide continuous service to patients and other operations to run smoothly. By better managing this work across all hospitals, hospital administration has more efficiencies and predictability by accessing a dashboard to easily check the status check of maintenance work on all of its facilities at any time.

Improved Regulatory Compliance.
Crothall’s FM program has maintained a Best-in-Class level of regulatory compliance throughout MedStar Health with The Joint Commission, highlighted by a significant reduction in findings since being implemented in 2020.

Solutions

Smooth Transition.
Crothall quickly implemented its proprietary software platform to manage preventive and corrective maintenance and improve regulatory compliance across all 10 hospitals. It implemented a database to track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) showing the real-time status of all maintenance work, such as the percentage of work orders completed, and the time it took to complete them.
The health system has approximately 50,000 pieces of equipment to maintain. On average, the hospitals are averaging 1,500 work orders per month. One location had approximately 45,000 work orders through the first nine months of 2023.
Crothall’s sophisticated software gathers data and analytics to track each asset and work order to ensure work is performed in a timely manner while also complying with healthcare regulations. Crothall’s Quality Assurance team also reviews the maintenance of key pieces of equipment at each hospital to validate each technician’s work.

Beyond Daily Maintenance, a Transformative Business Model.
After its first year, the Crothall team performed an assessment of the organization’s critical infrastructure needs. The team proposed a long-term plan to improve the physical infrastructure while saving costs on key services.
Under the previous provider, key equipment failure caused multiple interruptions in daily operations. Crothall’s leadership team and the health system administration also collaborated to secure additional funding for key equipment improvements.
Instead of replacing equipment at a much higher cost, Crothall refurbished critical Air Handler Units, including motors, control coils, and interior lining of drain pans and housings. This process led to cost savings ($12.2M of investment vs. $120M for traditional replacement) and equipment uptime improvements without negatively impacting hospital operations. The work was completed in one year, and there have been zero outages since.

New Software Improves Space Planning.
In a continuous effort to elevate its partnership and value, Crothall is implementing a new space planning tool/TeamWorks to be used by the Facilities and Finance teams. The software gives the teams the ability to automatically update the best use of space based on department relocation or renovations. The software also warehouses all Life Safety drawings, maps all the critical infrastructure equipment, and is an interface for cost center/department utilization data.

Additional Cost Savings.
The previous provider hired expensive outside contractors at two of MedStar’s largest hospitals to service some of the system’s maintenance work. By replacing them with Crothall technicians, we significantly reduced the dependency on third-party providers for electrical and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems maintenance and repair, resulting in approximately $1.2 million in savings annually.

Client Satisfaction.
Crothall conducts an annual survey with key stakeholders within the MedStar system and consistently achieves an overall satisfaction rating of 4.6 out of 5.

“MedStar Health’s partnership with Crothall’s Facilities Management has been a sea-change improvement to Facilities Management’s quality of service across the health system. I attribute the positive state of Facilities Management today to Crothall’s engagement and partnership during the initial phase-in of service.

Their approach to learning our organization was thorough and comprehensive, enabling the team to hit the ground running. Crothall transferred staff from the previous vendor, brought on strong leadership, evaluated performance, and implemented many swift changes to ensure stable operations and maintenance activities.
Their early actions created a strong foundation for new initiatives focused on infrastructure stabilization. They have also reduced outside purchased services, added technology, and increased end-user engagement. I couldn’t be happier about the team we’ve developed.”
— Stephen C. Wooldridge, Vice President, Integrated Real Estate and Facilities, MedStar Health