Maintenance in hospitals with less than 200 beds: Efficiency indicators

The efficiency and sustainability of maintenance is an added value in any building, although critical in hospitals, as it may alter the health of patients and workers. The objective of this paper is to analyse the efficiency of maintenance in hospitals with less than 200 beds. Eight Spanish hospitals with similar construction characteristics and identical maintenance strategies were analysed between 2012 and 2018. The number of maintenance incidents, operation times, costs generated, number of user complaints and other variables were studied and quantified. The results reveal that in hospitals with more than 25,000 annual stays, there are fewer maintenance costs and reports per surface and fewer reports per bed. It was found that hospitals larger than 10,000 m2 generate lower maintenance costs and fewer reports per useful area and maintenance reports per bed. Moreover, equations to estimate the annual average maintenance costs in hospitals based on its annual number of patient stays and useful floor area were found. A hospital with 164 beds was analysed as a case study. A series of maintenance indicators that allow comparing the efficiency and sustainability of a hospital is proposed, for example, annual maintenance operations and average time spent on preventive and corrective operations.