I worked for a startup that tracked hospital equipment (with active RFID tags), and it was shocking how disorganized hospitals can be. It's not usually a single person or department's fault though - there are a bunch of factors:

- equipment is often managed by a small team who doesn't have the resources to really track down everything

- equipment gets distributed to different departments who then might move it, store it, swap it, it breaks down and they don't tell anyone, etc

- theft can be a big issue: equipment is often very expensive and not very large, which means it has the ability to "walk off"

- different departments (or individuals) might hoard equipment because it can be difficult to get what you need exactly when you need it

- data about what you have can be split across 15 different systems that don't have the ability to talk or reconcile

- "full" real time tracking (like what we made) can be very expensive

So yes - there are systems that can help, but they're expensive and often not a first priority (even though they can help tremendously, especially when it comes time to do maintenance and reordering, etc.)