Your patients, staff, and visitors have become dependent on the ability to travel from floor to floor throughout your facility using elevators.
Elevators must be kept running safely and efficiently to ensure your daily operations of the hospital remain functional. All elevators require preventative maintenance, and eventually, even the best of elevators will develop problems requiring additional maintenance.
Knowing that elevator maintenance is inevitable, it is important to have a well-executed elevator maintenance agreement in place. While reviewing a current or future elevator maintenance agreement, there are a few questions you should consider to optimize your agreement:
- Have you taken the agreement and analyzed it?
- Has the current vendor provided you a repair history for each elevator?
- Are you satisfied with the current vendor?
- Do you have any expansions or upgrades planned? These should always be taken into consideration as they can provide leverage for your new contract.
- Have you benchmarked your pricing to the industry? This can be done through external research, networking, or benchmarking services, or through a consultant.
- What are the allowed increases in my payment structure?
- What counts as a trouble call, and do my trouble calls count as regular monthly service calls?
- Are any of my elevators in low occupancy areas, and would they quality for a low occupancy discount?
- What exclusions are outlined in the agreement, and who is managing these?
- What is the labor rate break down? Salary rates vary for mechanical and helper staff.
By asking the right questions, you will have all the information you need in your agreement to keep your costs off the top floor. The best agreement will make sure your facility has affordable elevator maintenance, allowing your elevators to be maintained and operated at their very best.
George Malik, the CEO of Quality First Solutions, has been in the healthcare industry for the past 30 years and has saved millions for hospitals nationwide.
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