5 hidden healthcare technology management costs hospitals may be overlooking

Where are hidden healthcare technology costs coming from?

Healthcare technology management influences far more than equipment uptime. It affects capital planning, clinical operations, cybersecurity, equipment availability, and overall financial performance.

Yet many hospitals continue to lose money through inefficiencies that are difficult to recognize because they develop over time.

Hospitals can incur significant avoidable costs through healthcare technology management inefficiencies, not simply because equipment fails, but because information about service contracts, asset utilization, lifecycle planning, rentals and operational workflows often remains siloed, making it difficult to see the full picture and make informed decisions.

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At a glance

Identify and address five common healthcare technology management challenges:

1. Overpaying for OEM service contracts that no longer align with asset performance or system needs.
2. Making reactive capital planning decisions that increase risk and misallocate investment.
3. Operating without real-time asset visibility, leading to duplicate purchases and unnecessary rentals.
4. Allowing temporary rentals to become ongoing operating expenses because owned assets aren’t visible or available.
5. Failing to align clinical and HTM workflows, creating avoidable downtime and service delays.
   
   

Medical equipment plays a critical role in patient care, yet many hospitals still manage healthcare technology through fragmented processes, disconnected data, and reactive decision-making.

The result is often hidden waste that extends far beyond repair costs alone.

Financial pressures are causing hospitals to extend the life of existing medical equipment and infrastructure. As equipment remains in service longer, supportability, cybersecurity readiness, operational continuity and capital prioritization become increasingly important.

As healthcare environments become more connected, hospitals must manage not only equipment uptime, but also visibility into utilization, cybersecurity exposure, software supportability, and dependency across thousands of connected medical devices.

Unnecessary service contracts. Duplicate equipment purchases. Long-term rentals. Misaligned capital decisions. Delays caused by limited coordination between clinical and HTM teams.

Individually, these issues may seem manageable. Across a healthcare system, they can quietly create significant avoidable expenses while increasing workflow friction.

Hidden costs often take shape in the everyday decisions hospitals make about servicing, replacing, locating and managing medical equipment.

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Are you overpaying for OEM medical equipment service contracts?

Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) service contracts are often renewed year after year without reevaluating whether the coverage still aligns with the health system’s needs.

While OEM support may remain appropriate for certain high-risk or highly specialized modalities, many hospitals continue paying for coverage on assets that could be safely and effectively supported through internal HTM teams or alternative service models.

The challenge is not simply contract cost alone. Limited visibility into asset performance, failure history, utilization, and service demand often prevents organizations from making informed decisions about where OEM support delivers value and where it creates unnecessary expense.

The financial impact can be significant. Infirmary Health achieved $2 million in annual savings by reducing its reliance on OEM service contracts while maintaining 98% uptime for mission-critical devices.

Best practices for evaluating OEM service contracts

• Conduct annual contract evaluations using actual asset performance and service history
• Compare OEM agreements against internal capabilities and performance-based service models
• Prioritize OEM coverage for high-acuity or manufacturer-dependent technologies
• Standardize service oversight across facilities to reduce contract duplication and variability

Building a more strategic service model

Reducing unnecessary OEM dependence is not about eliminating manufacturers from the equation. It is about creating a more strategic service model based on equipment data, asset criticality, and systemwide visibility into equipment performance.

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Are you relying on reactive medical equipment capital planning?

Many healthcare organizations still make replacement decisions based primarily on equipment age, isolated requests or anecdotal concerns rather than a connected view of equipment condition, utilization, service history, and system priorities.

Medical equipment age alone rarely tells the full story.

Some devices continue operating safely and effectively well beyond expected lifecycle timelines, while others create rising risk far earlier due to utilization demands, parts availability, cybersecurity exposure, or recurring service issues.

For connected medical devices, lifecycle decisions increasingly intersect with cybersecurity. Across one 10+ hospital health system, Intelas established enterprise-wide visibility into more than 5,000 networked medical devices to help identify vulnerabilities and prioritize remediation.

Without visibility into equipment condition, supportability, utilization, and clinical impact, hospitals risk replacing equipment too early, delaying replacement too long, or misallocating capital across the system.

Best practices for medical equipment capital planning

• Use risk-based lifecycle scoring instead of age-only replacement models
• Incorporate HTM, supply chain, finance, and clinical leadership into capital planning discussions
• Evaluate utilization, service trends, cybersecurity readiness, and clinical dependency together
• Build multi-year capital strategies grounded in real operational data

Moving from reactive to risk-based capital planning

Effective capital planning is no longer just a budgeting exercise. It requires connected visibility across the healthcare technology ecosystem to help organizations prioritize investments based on system-wide alignment, clinical demand, and long-term sustainability.

That means looking beyond equipment age alone and considering condition, service history, utilization, clinical impact, operational risk and remaining useful life when prioritizing replacement.

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Do you have real-time visibility into your medical equipment?

Hospitals frequently purchase or rent equipment they already own simply because assets cannot be easily located, tracked, or redistributed across the environment.

Equipment may sit unused in storage rooms, remain parked in departments after use, or become difficult to locate during periods of high demand. Over time, these visibility gaps create unnecessary capital purchases, increased rental dependency, workflow delays, and excess inventory.

In many hospitals, duplicate equipment purchases occur simply because staff cannot quickly determine whether clinically ready assets are already available elsewhere in the system.

The issue is rarely inventory volume alone. It is often a lack of real-time equipment visibility.

Best practices for improving medical equipment visibility

• Implement RTLS or active asset visibility strategies for high-mobility equipment
• Conduct recurring inventory validation and utilization reviews
• Improve clean room and equipment staging workflows
• Standardize equipment redistribution processes across departments and facilities

Turning asset visibility into better decisions

Asset visibility affects far more than inventory management. Hospitals that understand where equipment is, how often it is used, and whether it is clinically ready can make more informed decisions across procurement, staffing, rentals, and operational planning.

That visibility becomes even more important across multi-hospital systems, where centralized service, utilization and performance data can help shift planning from individual facility requests toward more consistent, systemwide planning.

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Are medical equipment rentals becoming a long-term expense?

The U.S. medical equipment rental industry is projected to reach approximately $6.7 billion in 2026, underscoring how heavily healthcare organizations rely on rental equipment. Rentals provide important clinical flexibility, particularly during surges, construction projects, or unexpected equipment downtime.

Many healthcare organizations unintentionally allow short-term rentals to evolve into long-term expenses due to limited visibility into asset availability, delayed repairs, or inconsistent coordination across departments.

In many cases, rental equipment remains in circulation simply because organizations lack centralized visibility into owned equipment readiness and availability across the healthcare system.

Over time, these disconnected workflows can cause rental costs to quietly exceed the cost of repairing or replacing owned assets.

Best practices for managing medical equipment rentals

• Establish clear rental utilization and escalation guidelines
• Monitor rental duration and frequency across the enterprise
• Improve visibility into owned equipment readiness and availability
• Coordinate rental oversight between HTM, clinical teams, and supply chain leadership

Connecting rental management with equipment readiness

Rental management becomes significantly more effective when organizations can connect equipment readiness, service activity, and clinical demand into a centralized view rather than managing rentals as isolated transactions.

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Are clinical and HTM workflows working together?

Inefficiencies often emerge when clinical teams and healthcare technology management teams operate with limited alignment.

Equipment may be removed from service unnecessarily. User-related issues may be reported as equipment failures. Devices may sit idle awaiting communication, validation, or reassignment.

These disconnects create avoidable downtime, workflow disruption, delayed response times, and unnecessary service expense.

As healthcare environments become more connected and complex, coordination between clinical operations, IT, and HTM becomes increasingly important to maintaining equipment readiness and supporting patient care continuity.

Best practices for aligning clinical and HTM workflows

• Establish recurring collaboration between clinical leadership, IT and HTM teams
• Implement proactive rounding and operational visibility workflows
• Provide frontline education on equipment use and basic troubleshooting
• Create standardized communication pathways for service escalation and equipment readiness

Creating a more connected HTM operating model

The strongest healthcare technology programs operate with shared visibility and coordinated decision-making across clinical, financial, and technical teams. That alignment helps reduce unnecessary service activity while improving confidence in equipment availability across the care environment.

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How can hospitals reduce healthcare technology management costs?

It starts with seeing the full picture.

While each of these challenges appears different, they often stem from the same underlying issue: disconnected data and limited visibility across the healthcare technology ecosystem.

Reducing waste requires more than maintaining devices after failure occurs. Hospitals need connected insight into equipment condition, utilization, service activity, cybersecurity readiness, lifecycle needs and clinical demand to make more informed decisions across the health system.

Solving these challenges doesn’t require five separate initiatives. It requires a connected strategy that brings together service delivery, asset management, lifecycle planning and operational visibility.

Intelas manages more than 1.15 million medical devices across more than 4,500 healthcare sites, including multi-hospital health systems, academic medical centers, community hospitals and other care environments. That experience gives our teams firsthand visibility into the service, utilization, lifecycle and operational challenges that can quietly drive unnecessary healthcare technology costs.