By K. Richard Douglas
AdventHealth is a health system that spans several states. “More than 100,000 skilled and compassionate caregivers in physician practices, hospitals, outpatient clinics, skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies and hospice centers provide individualized, holistic care,” according to the healthcare system’s website.
The healthcare system has a considerable presence in Florida, including its nine-hospital AdventHealth Central Florida Division (CFD), which spans three counties.
“Altamonte Hospital is one of nine hospitals within our Central Florida Division that is served by our clinical engineering department. Our team has a staff of 100, including front-line, support and leadership,” says Gary R. Butler, senior manager of clinical engineering.
Inside the AdventHealth CFD Clinical Engineering Department
Butler says that the CE team also supports 14 stand-alone EDs (OSEDs) and 35 sports medicine/rehab units. The department manages data for over 100,000 devices across 135 sites.
The supported hospital campuses include the 1,400-bed flagship AdventHealth Orlando, which spans four patient towers and covers all specialty services; the 550-bed AdventHealth Celebration; the 225-bed AdventHealth Kissimmee; the 450-bed AdventHealth East Campus; the 450-bed AdventHealth Winter Park; the 200-bed AdventHealth Apopka; and the 150-bed AdventHealth Winter Garden.
Leading the CFD CE team are Vice President of Support Services Dave Patchin; Executive Director of Clinical Engineering Dave Petters; Senior Manager of Imaging Services Robert Bagwill; Manager of the Project Management Office Liam Mahon; and Butler.
Leadership at the Altamonte Hospital includes Market Manager Joel Burke and Supervisor Pavel Marchenko. CE staff at the hospital also includes nine clinical engineers.
“The AdventHealth systemwide mission is ‘Extending the Healing Ministry of Christ’ and guides our every effort. Our vision for CFD Clinical Engineering is ‘We bring safety to care team and patients’ and is designed to complement the mission,” Butler says.
In-House Specialty Teams and IT Collaboration
He says that most biomed services across CFD are largely handled in-house with very limited outsourced agreements.
“We have an asset management team that works with our corporate supply chain team to manage agreements and budgets for any outsourced resources (labor, parts, etcetera),” Butler says.
The department has several specialty teams in-house, including imaging, sterilizer and SPD-related equipment, OR lights and tables, dialysis and RO carts, emergency/lab/sports medicine and rehab.
“Project management team works closely with our AdventHealth Office of Design and Construction to bring new sites and renovation of existing areas to go-live. Networking team works closely with our AdventHealth IT and clinical partners to assist in any issue that involves our internally managed infrastructure,” Butler adds.
He says that the team also has a high level of collaboration with its IT counterparts across all of CFD.
“We crafted our network engineering role (clinical IoT engineer) to have a focused relationship on both IT and our care teams. Anytime there is IT-related activity — upgrade, replacement of aging devices, planned network outages, etcetera — that could affect medical equipment connection, we are involved to ensure a return to normal operation (patient data flowing to electronic charting),” Butler says.
Building Relationships Through Rounding
The health system’s growth and expansion have relied on the resources of the CE department. The pace of this development has increased in recent years.
“AdventHealth has experienced significant and rapid growth requiring the staffing and training of a wide variety of roles who have served during the opening of new facilities across Central Florida. Two new hospitals and six new off-site stand-alone emergency departments (OSEDs) just in the last three years,” Butler says.
At Altamonte Hospital, the CE team has strengthened its connection to clinical departments through a purposeful routine.
“This is done through focused rounding efforts that the team does on a scheduled basis. The first is relationship rounding where the team builds that relationship with the department leader and staff to forge a high level of trust that the biomed department can be counted on to meet their equipment needs,” Butler says.
He says that the second is compliance rounding where the team sweeps the department for equipment in need of preventive or corrective maintenance.
“Joel and the team have developed a schedule and tracker that covers each department down to the room level. This optimizes the condition of our equipment and provides maximum safety for our care teams and patients,” Butler adds.
He says that the resources of the department are always available, including capital purchases.
“When there is an issue that involves medical equipment, we are the first to be called and the first to respond. We are available to contribute whether it is a hard downtime issue, or a user department making decisions about new equipment selection,” Butler says.
Solving a Medical Device Wi-Fi Mystery
One of the contributions that team members make is to do whatever detective work is necessary to solve problems related to devices or networks.
“We recently had devices losing network connections. Troubleshooting with our IT partners, we checked the usual suspects, and while everything was in working order, the problem persisted. We engaged the OEM to assist in troubleshooting the issue. The problem continued until we inquired if there were any software updates available that we could try. There were no current updates, but it did mimic the behavior of similar devices at another health system,” Butler says.
He says that this resulted in the discovery of a software issue causing intermittent Wi-Fi disconnections.
“The network architecture on its own often requires our insights to reveal deeper issues with software interactions with medical imaging or biomedical devices,” Butler adds.
Away from work, Butler says that several of the staff are active in the local Central Florida Biomedical Instrumentation Society.
“Several of our staff will attend the MD Expo as well as the yearly AAMI conference if it is being held in Florida,” he adds.
When AdventHealth needs to keep its large medical device inventory working smoothly, it relies on a 100-member clinical engineering department for the needed resources.
