Hospitals often bear the names of benefactors; those who donated funds for construction or a founding physician. A hospital can also be named after the person who deeded the land that it was built on.
That was the case when the future mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, John Peter Smith deeded five acres of land in the downtown area in 1877. The hospital got its official name in 1954.
Today, John Peter Smith (JPS) Health Network includes a 537-bed hospital on Main Street, a fire-story Patient Care Pavilion, a facility providing psychiatric services and an outpatient care center. There is also a Center for Cancer Care, the Center for Pain Management, the Cypress Health Center, the Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center and a number of clinics.
Responsibility for the maintenance and repair of over 21,000 assets falls to the network’s team of HTM professionals.
JPS Health Network’s 25-person Clinical Engineering Department includes three imaging specialists, an imaging team lead, three biomedical team leads, three biomedical specialists, 11 biomedical equipment technicians and two database coordinators. Additionally, there is one manager and one director. Six of the biomeds have CBET certification and three other team members have recently taken the exam.
The clinical engineering team repairs and maintains the equipment at the hospital, which is the only Level 1 trauma facility in Tarrant County. The hospital had more than one million patient encounters during 2014 and the facility’s emergency department peaks at over 400 visits daily. The urgent care exceeds 60,000 visits annually. With this kind of equipment usage, the team is kept very busy. But, this is only part of what the network handles.
The JPS Health Network also delivers 5,000 babies annually and provides health care to correctional facilities in the county. Also, it is the only facility in the county to provide a psychiatric emergency center. In addition, the network runs an outpatient surgery center and has 61 clinics throughout the community.
Moving some service contracts to the department’s in-house capabilities was an early goal for the team manager.
“In the almost two years that I’ve been on board, I have pushed to adopt in-house service. When I arrived, we had six BMETs and two imaging specialists to maintain a 535-plus bed hospital, school-based clinics, outpatient surgery centers, and other community clinics. We relied heavily on service contracts,” says Joshua Virnoche, MBA, CBET, manager of the clinical engineering team.
“Over the last 12 months, we’ve reduced the amount of service contracts we hold by $1.3 million. We brought on additional technicians, lobbied for training, and have increased our customer satisfaction vastly,” Virnoche says. “I understand there are certain items that we will maintain service contracts on, but the goal is to minimize all contracted services and have our in-house techs be, at least, first call on everything that has a service contract.”
In addition to cutting down on service contract expenses, the CE team is represented on nearly every committee in the network.
“We provide report outs to the facility safety committee on recalls, corrective maintenance completion, preventive maintenance completion, nurse call work orders [and] project updates,” Virnoche says. “These items are reported up through the Environment of Care committee which also has representation from our department.”
Beyond providing information to these committees, the department has team members participating in the Laser Safety, Radiation Safety, RTLS, Critical Alarms and various other groups throughout the JPS Health Network.
Areas of Specialty
Virnoche says that the department is broken down into four separate teams of specialization. The Critical Care team maintains the NICU, ICU, progressive care and CVICU, along with additional duties throughout the hospital. The experience level of his team is mixed.
“[The] Perioperative Care team maintains the ER, OR, Outpatient OR, Sterile Processing, Endoscopy, as well as other areas. This team is mostly experienced technicians, with a few new-to-the-field technicians on board,” Virnoche says.
The department also utilizes a Support Services team, which maintains the laboratory, school-based clinics, the county jail’s needs, outpatient clinics and many other areas. The experience level of this team is also mixed. There is also an imaging team, which is responsible for all types of imaging equipment.
“This team is a split of experienced biomed techs that have advanced to imaging, and experienced imaging technicians,” Virnoche adds.
Problem Solvers
Besides the more routine PM and repair projects, the department has had some shorter-term challenges.
“In the summer, we were part of a team that was used to ensure hospital and patient safety, during a planned power outage for new construction,” Virnoche says. “This was 10 days of work, from 11 p.m. until 5 a.m. We ensured our equipment was shut down properly and came back online during this process.”
Since then, the team helped with the completion of construction, and participated in the opening of, a new cardiovascular wing, EP, and Cath Labs.
“Additionally, we are very involved in the RTLS implementation in the hospital. We are currently in phase one of three, and will begin with piloting the system in the next few weeks,” Virnoche adds.
The service commitment and mindset of the biomeds played a crucial role in one recent project.
“Something unique to BMETs, in my opinion, is that we are problem solvers, and for that reason people are drawn to us for help,” Virnoche reasons.
He offers an example.
“Our team is always flexible and we work to make accommodations for everyone that needs us. For example, we had an orthopedic clinic that was moving to a new location in the same part of the city. The old clinic needed to use their X-ray unit until the day the clinic shut down (Friday), but also needed to use the X-ray unit the day the new clinic opened (Monday),” Virnoche says.
He explains that the imaging team orchestrated a move of a C-arm, CR reader, and portable X-ray unit to the new clinic, to ensure the clinic could see patients until the X-ray room could be de-installed and reinstalled in the new clinic.
Virnoche sums up the motivation for the department as; “We do whatever is asked of us. Our entire goal is to ensure our patients receive the best care possible.”