Stop me if you have heard these before: “PM Completion Percentage,” “Mean Time to Repair,” and “Uptime.” Those are a few of the important calculations used in the evaluation of biomedical engineering departments. They are hard-data metrics that some computer maintenance management software (cmms) programs calculate to be regularly reviewed by executive leadership. As a biomedical technician, reporting these metrics is an essential and critical part of the job as these data points are used to evaluate the efficiencies of biomedical engineering departments, often against metrics standardized for regulatory requirements or comparisons against known industry standards.
On the other hand, it is equally important to articulate the successes of your department to executive leadership in ways that aren’t regulatory requirements. With CMMS advancements data is more readily available to technicians than ever before. Utilize this data to tell the story of what you, as a technician, do day-in and day-out in support of the organization’s mission and what procedures demonstrate how you go above and beyond. Here are three seldom used, but exceedingly important, metrics that can help articulate your achievements:
Cost Savings
Almost every day in health care organizations across the country, biomedical engineering technicians spend a portion of their day researching ways to reduce cost expenditures for their respective facilities. When a piece of vital medical equipment experiences downtime, no matter the reason, it’s important to replace the defective component with a high-quality, original equipment manufacturer-grade part. In today’s health care environment, OEM-grade parts are available from a variety of sources. Utilizing preferred vendors, purchasing agreements, and past experiences, knowledgeable technicians like Ron Price and David Jones with Sodexo Clinical Technology Management track these cost-saving efforts daily. Their daily tracking spreadsheet allows them to report their successes each month to executive leadership with quantifiable data. In the first quarter of 2017 alone, Ron Price and Dave Jones reported to executive management a cost avoidance or savings of $24,445.86 directly attributed to their efforts.
Inventory Increase
Supporting medical equipment well past the manufacturer’s end of life date is an aspect of biomedical engineering departments that can often go unnoticed. With new advancements in technology and medical equipment, the number of devices entering your facility may increase from year to year. However, the need to maintain equipment already in use doesn’t conversely retreat. The desire to keep equipment in service, while simultaneously acquiring new equipment, presents a situation where the inventory has increased and technicians are supporting more equipment with relatively the same budget. If this situation occurs, it’s important to communicate this change as a measurement of success. If you experienced a 10 percent growth in inventory, are safely maintaining the equipment within your scope while operating within the same budget, this is a positive success metric and it should not go unnoticed.
Recalls and Alerts
Manufacturer safety field corrections, fda recalls, ecri alerts, who keeps track of it all? If it’s you, let it be known. The time allocated toward analyzing alerts is a valuable use of resources. Whether it’s cross referencing inventories, remediating devices, educating end-users, or coordinating with risk management, create a simple spreadsheet or database, to track the time. Any resource utilized in addressing patient safety is significant and provides leadership with knowledge of who in the organization has the watchful eye.
Whether it’s reporting on regulatory requirements or articulating a success story to leadership, find creative ways to show management teams the hard work that is put forth every day by technicians in the field.
Robert Milward is currently serving as Director of Clinical Technology Management with Sodexo Clinical Technology Management for a 198-bed health care organization. With over 10 years of experience in electronics and medical devices in health care and military settings, he enjoys the unique aspects of the biomedical engineering field. In addition, he enjoys developing talent and positioning others for success, having created several training programs for newly hired technicians at multiple facilities across the country.