Curious if your PM completion rate is normal? Benchmarks by hospital size.

Benchmarking in healthcare facilities isn't a new trend. Healthcare Technology Management (HTM) and Healthcare Facilities Management (HFM) leaders have always compared notes at conferences, over coffee, in whichever regional association meets near them, because everyone wants to know the same thing: are my numbers where they should be, or do they just feel satisfactory because nobody's told me otherwise? In 35-plus years working in this industry, I've watched that comparison move from an informal hallway conversation to something departments can answer with real data, as CMMS platforms have gone from simple recordkeeping to systems that surface the trend before anyone has to go looking for it.

The challenge? Most departments only get a real answer twice: at survey time, when a surveyor benchmarks you against a standard you didn’t pick, or at budget time, when finance asks you to justify headcount or a capital request against numbers you don’t have handy. Neither is a good moment to be figuring out for the first time whether your program is performing the way it should.

What the data can show, by size

Hospital size changes what “normal” looks like, and lumping a 200,000 square foot facility with a 2 million square foot system produces benchmarks nobody can use. Broken out by size, a few patterns hold up consistently.  

• • Asset density runs somewhere in the range of 8 - 10 tracked assets per 1,000 square feet across most hospital types.
    
    
  • Staffing ratios shift significantly, from roughly 100 assets per technician to 155+in more standardized processes around volume.
    
    
  • PM completion rates in well run programs land in the 94%-98% range, and that’s true across the size spectrum. This shows completion rate is less about how big you are and more about whether the workflow is disciplined. Although regulations require 100% on included UMP and MEMP assets, this can be influenced by mitigating conditions (unable to locate and inventoried assets not included in maintenance program policies).  

An important ratio for healthcare maintenance professionals to note is PM to CM. A department running at 50% or better preventive versus corrective work is generally ahead of the curve. Industry best-practice is closer to 3 to 1 PM to CM, and the allowance for AEMS can move that closer to 4 to 1. Fall below, and you’re spending more of your time reacting to failures than preventing them, which is a more expensive way to run a program even before you count the risk exposure.

Fall below, and you’re spending more of your time reacting to failures than preventing them, which is a more expensive way to run a program even before you count the risk exposure.

FSI's CMMS suite, built to turn maintenance data like PM completion rates into benchmarks you can act on. 

Three things worth calculating today, with your own numbers

First, take your total tracked asset count and your square footage and see where you land against the 8 to 10 per 1,000 range. Comparing your count against that range tells you whether your inventory itself is proportional to your facility, or whether something is under- or over-counted. Often organizations find that many assets managed by third parties are not in their defined inventory.  

Next, take your PM completion percentage over the last quarter and check it against the requirements, considering the current regulatory landscape and 94%-98% band for programs your size, not against an arbitrary internal target someone set years ago. Finally, pull your PM to CM ratio specifically -that ratio tends to predict budget conversations before they happen.

A benchmarking conversation only works if the underlying numbers are trustworthy, which usually comes down to whether completion and classification data is being entered consistently at the technician level, not just rolled up at the end of the month. Mobile platforms and real-time record processing increase data accuracy and should be a core part of your service delivery strategy. Once your data entry is solid, pulling these ratios by zone or by tech instead of just department-wide is usually where you find the real story. That zone-by-zone cut is worth doing even if your department-wide numbers look fine, because department averages hide a lot. A department sitting at 95% completion overall can still have one zone or one tech quietly dragging the number down. That's worth investigating before it becomes a bigger problem. 

Why benchmarking is worth running as a standing practice, not a one-time check

FSI’s CMMS platform is utilized by more than 1,300 hospital departments and has processed more than 10.9 million work orders. A dataset of that size is also why I'd push back on treating this as a one-time exercise before a survey. The departments getting the most out of benchmarking are pulling these numbers regularly, watching the trend lines, and treating a slipping ratio as an early signal rather than something to explain after the fact.

Benchmarks are most useful when they give you a clearer picture of where you stand—and where there may be room to improve. PM completion rates are only one part of that story, but looking at performance on a pre-determined schedule alongside hospital size, staffing, asset volume, among other operational factors can help teams ask better questions and identify the right areas to focus on.

The next step is making sure you can trust the data behind those decisions. With more than 20 years of experience building CMMS solutions specifically for healthcare maintenance teams, FSI helps organizations turn their maintenance data into meaningful benchmarks, clearer reporting, and actionable insights. Whether you’re trying to understand how your performance compares or strengthen the reporting behind it, we can help you get there.

Interested in learning more ways Healthcare's leading CMMS can advance your operations? Reach out to the FSI team here.

  
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