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Author: Patrick Lynch
I hear more and more requests for a national, chapter-based biomedical association. Many of the local associations are having trouble with participation, membership, attendance and volunteers. It seems as if there are always lots of suggestions about things to do, and always too few volunteers to do them.
Is your job secure? Is it as secure as it was five years ago? Healthcare is changing. We see it all around us. When driving a car, there are warning signs to tell us of upcoming things that could wreck our lives and careers. Not so in the hospital.
There are lots of HTM managers today who should never be managers. Many of them grew up (professionally) doing things other than working in HTM. Others could barely manage themselves when they were technicians.
I am trying to be better organized as I travel overseas to perform repairs and training of local biomeds. When we travel overseas, we do not know exactly what types of equipment we will work on, much less what different manufacturers, models or vintages of equipment we will find. Even more than this, we are not sure which nation of origin the equipment we find will be from –Israel, Germany, Korea, China?
I have a question. Since when does the Joint Commission (TJC) change their standards and performance guidelines based on a powerful, but knee-jerk and error-prone agency like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)?
Why are so many HTM (aka Biomed or Clinical Engineering) departments being outsourced? There are basically two reasons. First, there are some lazy managers who fail to keep up with the latest technology. They are content to have as much as 70 percent of their medical devices serviced under an outside contract.
As the Healthcare Technology Management (HTM) profession strives to become uniform and cohesive, there are several major issues holding us back. They revolve around the common terminology which we use (or should use) to define and measure the things we do. Here are a few which are in need of work:
