By K. Richard Douglas
The recent Omicron variant has affected more children than previous COVID-19 strains. This has impacted many pediatric hospitals. It is another reminder of how important these institutions are to the health care needs of the patients who rely on them; especially the youngest patients.
During more normal times, when the nation is not struggling with a contagious virus, the work of pediatric hospitals is especially important.
In Kansas City, Missouri, one of these critically important facilities is Children’s Mercy Kansas City. Children have been treated at Children’s Mercy for more than 120 years. The nonprofit treats a half-million patients annually. In addition to the hospital, there are outpatient clinics and urgent care centers throughout Kansas and Missouri.
The Biomedical Engineering Department at Children’s Mercy is comprised of its clinical engineering team and its medical equipment management services (MEMS) team.
Clinical Engineering Shop Manager Kevin Johnson leads a talented team.
“Our clinical engineering department consists of Tony Orlick, diagnostic imaging/remote clinics team lead; Harold Golden, CBET, projects/IT team lead and Dominick Pritchard, general team lead. Including team leads, our three teams consist of the diagnostic imaging/remote clinics team with four members, our projects/IT team consists of four members and our general team consists of 13 members,” Johnson says.
He adds that the department also includes its MEMS team, which is managed by Barry Vogelbacher, MEMS operations manager.
“The MEMS department consists of about 24 medical equipment technicians and respiratory equipment technicians. A variety of our technicians have CET, CBET, networking certifications and other types of credentialing and degrees or are actively working towards these,” Johnson says.
Overseeing the entire biomedical department is Director Karl McCombs.
“The Biomedical Engineering Department includes clinical engineering as well as our MEMS department, which provides low-level equipment disinfection and distribution of medical equipment. The collaboration with MEMS helps in the equipment rotation process for capturing items due for PM. Our imbedded cybersecurity technicians help bridge the gap between conventional IT and biomedical technicians and keeps us on the forefront of cybersecurity vulnerabilities and threats,” Johnson says.
The department supports medical equipment in two primary care hospitals, one located in downtown Kansas City, Missouri and the other located in Overland Park, Kansas, which consist of a combined 366 patient beds.
“We also have numerous urgent care facilities and specialty clinics located throughout the metropolitan Kansas City area as well as Kansas and Missouri. We are the only pediatric Level-1 trauma center and Level-4 NICU in the region, and we are the largest stand-alone pediatric hospital between St. Louis, Missouri and Denver, Colorado. In addition, we have the only pediatric CICU capability in the region. Finally, we have our new 10-story Children’s Mercy Research Institute which specializes in pediatric illnesses, medication and treatment research,” Johnson says.
Contracts are managed by the department’s clinical engineering department in conjunction with the internal contract services supply chain department.
“We coordinate our contract coverage with our customer departments. While we support many items with our staff, we also have contracts on a variety of products that are OEM-only supported, and we also have first-look agreements in place,” Johnson says.
He says that data collection is obtained through a CMMS database that is also used for determining staffing productivity, planned maintenance and corrective maintenance work order statistics, for assisting customer departments in the capital budgeting and life-cycle process as well as for tracking cybersecurity and equipment recall remediation matters.
“We use the MediMizer as our CMMS database, Medigate for our cybersecurity purposes, and Cetani for our RTLS tracking purposes,” Johnson says.
Members of the teams cover a wide array of specialties.
“We support a wide variety of products at our facility with OEM training for our technicians, either at an OEM training facility or we sometimes have the OEMs provide onsite technical training for our technicians,” Johnson says.
He says that as a pediatric hospital, some examples of critical care equipment the team services include anesthesia machines, the ventilator fleet, all infant care products, monitoring systems, lab and research areas and imaging products.
“We support over 98 percent of our installed base internally,” he says.
Putting these specialties into practice, the department members provide planned maintenance, corrective service and recall remediation oversight for medical equipment at the facilities located in the Kansas City metropolitan area as well as the remote clinic locations in Kansas and Missouri.
Collaboration and cooperation with IT are easier when you have expertise within the biomed team.
“As mentioned above, our department includes three imbedded IT technicians on our Projects/IT team who collaborate with the Children’s Mercy IS/IT and cybersecurity groups. Our IT technicians also work with our equipment integration into the EMR,” Johnson says.
Involved Biomeds
Along with day-to-day responsibilities, the department members have also addressed many special projects and are involved with their local association and assist in the training of new biomeds.
“Some of the projects that we have been recently involved with include a house-wide transition of our defibrillators and AEDs units to a different manufacturer, we have a dedicated cybersecurity that are part of the clinical engineering department, replacement of imaging rooms, the creation of the first pediatric CICU in our area, doubling the size of our NICU to 84 bays, and the involvement with our new 10-story research tower expansion,” Johnson says.
Away from the workplace, the team is involved in the larger HTM community, as well as helping new biomeds to start careers.
“We are very involved with our local HTM association (HTMA-MW), and we also participate in advisory capacities to our local community colleges and State Tech in Linn, Missouri for their HTM program. In addition, we also provide internship programs for State Tech as well as other military sponsored internships, for people interested in getting into the HTM career field,” Johnson says.
The health of children in the greater Kansas City area isn’t only achieved through great clinicians but also the dedicated HTM professionals at Children’s Mercy Kansas City. Through expertise and specialization, they keep the medical equipment maintained while serving the greater good of the HTM community.
At the time of writing, the department had some open positions. Learn more: https://www.childrensmercy.org/careers.