Is your local health system meeting a growing demand for home healthcare? Is your healthcare technology management (HTM) department suddenly doing house calls? AAMI wants to hear all about it and more for a unique survey of the HTM field.
“It really is important that we hear from all sectors of the industry,” said Mike Busdicker, an enterprise director for Intermountain Health and chair of AAMI’s Technology Management Council (TMC). “So, we’re looking at maintenance management systems, independent organizations, in-house programs, and manufacturers. The more information we can collect from the field, the better clarity we’ll be able to provide” for future resources and guidance.
The TMC is seeking to survey HTM professionals regarding if and how they are approaching home healthcare and the maintenance of devices intended for a patient’s home. Relevant organizations and professionals are welcome to participate in the ongoing survey.
“One of the things we’re really looking at now, as the technology continues to advance, is home healthcare. And that’s different than telehealth,” Busdicker explained.
As an example, Busdicker shared that Intermountain Health, an early adopter of home health capabilities located in Salt Lake City, UT, has an inventory of 35,000 pieces of medical equipment intended for the care of a patient in their home. And while these devices don’t always facilitate remote patient monitoring or remote doctor-to-patient communication—as would be seen with telehealth devices—they do remain a constant fixture in patient’s treatment.
“We’re now installing things like dialysis machines, O2 concentrators, etcetera… So, now our frontline caregivers and HTM technicians have to go into patients’ homes” to care for those patients and maintain their devices, Busdicker said. He added that the demand for at-home healthcare is only increasing as technological advances in medical devices enable new levels of at-home care.
The main question he and his peers are seeking to answer is “what is the involvement of HTM departments in home health?” Once Busdicker and his peers have a better understanding of how your average HTM department is approaching the subject, they’ll better be able to identify common challenges the TMC may address by creating guidance documents and curating helpful resources for the greater HTM community.
“How many organizations are involved with home health? How many have home health facilities located throughout a state or region where equipment is going out to patients and coming back? And when a patient goes home and equipment goes with them, how involved is HTM with that process?” he asked. “We want to learn as much as we can.”
