A very valuable resource resides within just about every healthcare organization that many times goes untapped when the topic around medical equipment replacement is discussed. Sure, the request may come into the Biomedical Department from the nurse or radiology clinical manager asking for service histories, though usually this is in an effort to support “their desire” in replacing the “old” medical equipment. But wouldn’t it make more sense for the Biomedical Department to be that forward thinking resource champion of the organization in proactively planning medical equipment replacement looking three or perhaps five years out?
The norm across the country has been that medical equipment replacement is not “planned” but more of a “crisis by crisis” or in some cases a political physician chess game. I can tell you first hand from a personal career now entering its 30th year in the field, I have seen hundreds of thousands and in a few cases over one million+ dollars spent on “emotional purchases” of medical equipment in the “name of patient care”. In these unfortunate situations many of those medical equipment purchases turned out to be under-utilized with no sustainable business plan and in some situations if the clinical program it supported fizzled out or the physician champion had exited the organization, the equipment was stowed away to “depreciate off the books” in a distant storage room somewhere on the campus. Talk about healthcare dollars wasted – now you can’t blame the Affordable Care Act on this one!
In my travels around the country, I have seen a few biomedical programs become engaged in proactive medical equipment planning and some of those having established pretty good replacement forecasting tools. This ability in medical equipment planning and replacement resources has never been more critical to a healthcare organization since the current and future day capital dollars allotted each year now represent about one-third of the funding needed to purchase replacement medical devices and stay current with advancing technology.
Here’s a couple of take-away’s from this week’s blog for you to noodle on. What is your healthcare organization’s medical equipment replacement plan for this year and the next five years ahead? How can your team be a contributing resource to that replacement planning strategy? There is no better medical equipment “knowledge source” than yourself Mr. and Ms. HTM service professional – again, here’s another opportunity for you to shine!
1 Comment
Alan,
This is an excellent blog to start the year planning medical equipment. While I have been planning medical equipment replacement for many years and the approach was reviewing service history, age of equipment, and vendor support as the primary metrics. The adoption of ACA has reduced budgets and had strengthen our positions HTM Service professional to use more data driven metrics when planning. I believe one of the most overlook metrics is Utilization. By analyzing use counts on equipment or procedure codes in your EMR to verify and measure equipment utilization, has the capability of justifying ROI. Furthermore, having a 5 year plan is critical to your company’s forecasting for strategy planning of expensive medical systems. In addition, a 10 year outlook can prepare financial strategies for long term planning and increase professional capital for HTM professionals in the C Suite.
Thank you for your contributions,
Eddie Acosta