Piedmont Atlanta Hospital continues to deliver health care options to the capitol city and beyond with facilities throughout the state of Georgia.
“For more than a century, Piedmont Healthcare has been a recognized leader in delivering expert care,” according to the hospital’s website. “Last year, Piedmont served nearly two million patients – performing over 44,000 surgeries, delivering 8,000 babies, providing 471,695 outpatient encounters, completing 235 organ transplants and handling nearly 250,000 emergency room visits. For most, that would be a great track record. For us, it’s a good start.”
“At Piedmont, we believe it’s always time to get better,” the website adds. “Time to build on our reputation of excellence and enhance our services to deliver a whole new level of compassionate care, and time for discovering new treatment options while providing technology and tools that give patients the information they need – and the voice they deserve in choosing their health care.”
What started as a single hospital more than 100 years ago is now an integrated health care system of five hospitals and close to 100 physician and specialist offices across greater Atlanta and North Georgia.
A vital part of the health care system’s growth and a strong protector of its reputation is its Biomedical Engineering Department which is a part of the Supply Chain division.
Under the direction of Biomedical Engineering Manager Steve Kelley and the system’s Senior Director Jeff Allen, an 11-member crew of “biomeds” and five imaging specialists maintain about 11,000 devices in the flagship hospital in Buckhead, Ga. They are part of a team that supports more than 28,000 devices throughout the system.
The biomeds on the team at Piedmont Atlanta include Bill Andrews, BIT, BMET II; Willie Briggs, LSO, BMET III; Wayne Durden, BMET III; Isaac Faraco, BMET I; Scott Garrett, BMET III; Wayne Morris, BMET II; Albert Price, BMET II; Randy Ragan, BMET III; Mark Southerland, BMET IIII; Russ Walker, BMET I; and Dennis Picou, BMET II.
The members of the Atlanta imaging team are Darryl Evert, Mike Ragan, Mitch Robertson, Albert Davis and David Boak. They are under the direction of Jeff Seiler. Seiler joined Piedmont as the manager of biomedical imaging in April 2015. This group of talented imaging specialists are responsible for 350 pieces of equipment including devices for CT, MR, mammography, nuclear medicine, ultrasound and more.
They are currently involved in a major project – the installation of a new catheterization laboratory or cath lab within Piedmont Heart Institute at Piedmont Atlanta.
The Imaging team has created a cost savings of approximately $5 million over the past three years.
Piedmont Promise
Communication is key to success in almost every profession, and it is not taken for granted at Piedmont. The biomedical engineering department holds a daily Safety Huddle meeting where they discuss problems they have experienced with equipment or issues they have encountered in the various departments that could impact patient care.
Each day they also discuss the Piedmont Promise and go around the room to see if anyone witnessed a positive interaction or outcome in the past 24 hours.
“For more than a century, Piedmont has been caring for patients, and caring about them. We’ve earned our reputation by treating patients and their loved ones the way we’d want to be treated. By listening and genuinely hearing. By alleviating pain, by also alleviating fear. It’s what separates us from any other health care organization out there,” according to the website. “The (Piedmont) Promise defines our belief that every person who walks into a Piedmont Healthcare facility should be cared for in a genuine, respectful and heartfelt way, and treated by some of the world’s best doctors using the latest medical technology.”
At a recent meeting, Southerland shared a concern.
“The UPS in the lab went out a couple of times on the Siemens analyzer in the lab,” he said.
Briggs shared an update regarding an ongoing project. He is working with the electrophysiology lab on a complete rebuild and upgrade of the room. Briggs said the work is the result of some electromagnetic interference and EKG artifact during heart ablation cases.
“We are running a complete dedicated circuit for every critical device,” Briggs said. “There are more than 40 circuits. The manufacturer is custom designing the interior of a boom electrically and shielding-wise.”
It is a project generating interest from other facilities.
“Other facilities are contacting us and following our progress,” Briggs said. “It is a very long and very involved process.”
The project includes the shielding of the floor and is a very expensive project but one that illustrates the system’s mantra that safety comes first.
“They correct electrical anomalies in your heart. They measure microvolts and micrograms in your heart,” Briggs explained. “Our electrophysiologists need a clear picture.”
“We are doing everything we can to create the best environment for them,” he added.
Teamwork
Kelley sees the department as a part of a team with a goal to provide patient safety and good outcomes.
The biomedical engineering department provides cost savings along the way with “in-house repairs, second sourcing of parts, new construction design support, training,” Kelley said. It is all for the “general support of quality patient care,” he adds.
Training is another important aspect of the system’s biomedical engineering operations.
“We feel that training is necessary to keep costs down. We identify educational opportunities and run them through a justification process,” Kelley said. “Our goal is to pick the ones that provide the most cost-savings opportunities. We also do a lot of in-house training and cross training.”
Another part of the department’s overall success is the ability to work with the many departments throughout the hospital. Kelley said the team has worked with each department to help them gain a sense of ownership regarding the equipment and devices that they use.
“We have changed the culture here over the past two years. We had to work consistently to get the equipment users to be a part of our equipment management program and take responsibility to look at the PM due stickers and notify us,” Kelley said. “We also went to an online work request system and really stuck to our guns when it came to logging work orders. The process is now working smoothly, and we’re giving back notification to the users to keep them informed.”
This process has prompted additional communication.
“We have anesthesia, ventilators, laser, perfusion, and patient monitoring specialists as well as a separate imaging support group in biomed,” Kelley explained. “We assign areas to each tech so the nurses in that area get to know their biomed.”
Jo Lenyk with infection prevention at Piedmont Atlanta shared another example of the communication and teamwork emphasized by Kelley and the department.
“Steve makes rounds with us regularly, at least once a week,” she said. “They reassure us they are following the manufacturers’ recommendations.”
“They do a great job,” she added.