By K. Richard Douglas
In upstate in New York, you will find the birthplace of amateur photography in a city with access to the Finger Lakes and people who may have some Canadian coinage in their pockets. Rochester, New York is a place that gets a lot of snowfall and people really like Wegman’s grocery store. Sitting on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, the locals would prefer to say they live in Western New York. Just an hour and a half from Niagara Falls, the city also has direct access to the famous Erie Canal.
Serving the people of Rochester is Rochester General Hospital, a 528-bed hospital tertiary care facility which is part of the Rochester Regional Health System. The Sands-Constellation Heart Institute (SCHI) is located at Rochester General Hospital and has been designated as a Thomson/Solucient Top 100 Cardiovascular hospital nine times.
The clinical engineering department that services the hospital also handles approximately 100 offsite clinics. The department consists of three clinical engineering technicians, three clinical engineering tech seniors, four clinical engineering imaging tech seniors, one supervisor and a system level director.
The group is overseen by Dave Weed, director of Facilities and Biomedical Engineering. The team’s supervisor is Anthony Alongi. The Clinical Engineering technicians include Ronnie Cooper, Rickey Harris and Jennifer Fuller. The Clinical Engineering technician seniors include Connie Lubberts and Gary Reagan. The Clinical Engineering technician senior imaging staff include Kim Pulver, Rick Formicola and Julie Farabell.
The team at Rochester General has experience and expertise in the areas of anesthesia, ventilators, balloon pumps, ESUs, general X-ray, cardiovascular labs, MRI, CT, nuclear medicine, LINACs and clinical networks.
Data is maintained, and assets are managed, using Four Rivers Total Maintenance System (TMS).
Projects
The Clinical Engineering department has been involved in a number of projects that have kept the team busy. Some of these projects have included medical device integration and implementation, a 3T MRI installation, a CT installation, ECG management systems, an IV pump management system project and a enterprise patient monitoring project.
“As we were implementing the use of GE Muse in the hospital to network our EKG orders and facilitate the use of the EKG machines and streamline the workflow for the patient care technicians, biomed and the IT department faced many obstacles,” Alongi says. “Started with multivendor EKG systems; in our case Philips and the new GE models. For them to talk in the Muse, the Philips would need a translator. Biomed decided to go with Datamed to facilitate the translation.”
He says that after much testing was performed, the system would not translate properly; if at all. In a joint effort IST, Datamed and the biomed team went on a venture to solve any issues and make the system work.
“We found all the issues and resolved them. We met the datelines and surpassed all expectations in regards to the upgrades to the Philips TC70 carts that had to be performed before [the] go live date. We pulled together as a team and we conquered victory. It’s a pleasure to work with a team that knows that when the going gets tough, only the tough get going. Our team is tough,” Alongi says.
There have been some challenges along the way; sometimes vexing, but always within the team’s abilities.
Kim Pulver says that one team member was trying to figure out how to get the GE and Siemens ultrasounds to interface to the EP and Cath Lab Flex monitors for the Echo Lab techs. She says that the department was able to figure out what cables and video splitters were needed and trained the echo techs how to connect with the least amount of effort.
“Regarding the GE and Siemens ultrasounds in the EP and Cath Labs to the Philips Flex monitors. That entailed figuring which DVI-I or DVI-D output port on the ultrasound to use without degrading the signal, whether a splitter cable alone could be used to go to two outputs (Monitor on Flex and ultrasound), amplifier needed or not (was), where to get power for amplifier and ordering long enough cables from amplifier to Flex monitor (10 feet) to give techs flexibility of movement of ultrasound during cases,” Alongi explains.
“Then training techs which cables and amplifiers to hook up to which machines/ports depending on which they are using on that day,” he adds.
Pulver also remembers a time when there was a telemetry dropping issue a couple of years ago and biomed ordered in several mobile monitors, got them ready for deployment and manned the office around the clock while GE resolved a front end issue.
Creative thinking, resourcefulness and patient safety have all combined to lead the group to new ideas and ways to benefit patients and clinicians.
“Gary Reagan located a smaller length air hose to use on the sequential compression device (SCD) in an effort to reduce a trip hazard cause by longer length hoses. This effort reduced patient falls and increased patient safety,” Alongi says.
“We developed an emergent response cart of patient monitors to be utilized during patient census surge in emergency department or in the event our telemetry system failed,” he adds.
There was also a time when the team needed to come up with a solution for broken network cables in the MOU, which were an expensive item.
“When network cable to wall and monitor is connected and a patient needs to walk, they would forget to disconnect the network port and walk away which would result in the network port ripping off the CPU board of the Dash 3000 resulting in a $1,800 expense,” Alongi says.
“[We] found that GE had a breakaway cable available that connects to the network port that when a patient walks away the cable will disconnect with little force before the network port on the wall or the CPU board is damaged. Cable cost is $78. Major CPU board repairs were saved and network ports on walls were no longer damaged,” he says.
In the land of the Finger Lakes and finer grocery shopping experiences, there is also good news for residents who have to visit the hospital; the Rochester General Clinical Engineering team is on the job.