Sponsored by The InterMed Group
By Danny Mobley
Today’s clinical engineering departments are commonly short staffed and sometimes underfunded, yet they’re often asked to stretch their limited resources to take on critical projects. Clinical Engineering (CE) department managers regularly manage chaos.
When it comes to their inventory management responsibilities, the following are common experiences and contemplations:
Importance of accuracy, and keeping up with and tracking new data fields (i.e. for cybersecurity)
Does your hospital leadership assume the CE department has the staff and technology to keep up with an accurate and up-to-date inventory?
Under that assumption, the conversation with administration can be uncomfortable. Advice: Be prepared with a solution.
Since an accurate inventory and equipment pedigree data isn’t a revenue source for the hospital, it can be more challenging to convince leadership to hire FTEs for purposes of getting caught up. What happens when the project’s over…what do you do with the “extra” headcount?
These common and frequent challenges might be a phase, but what do you think … will they get better, persist or worsen?
If you’ve read the reports about a 61 percent increased need for BMETs, mixed with an attrition rate of approximately 50 percent (retiring BMET population), and add a low BMET graduation rate over the next nine years, we’re moving into a BMET labor shortage.
Since health care organizations can’t afford to stockpile personnel in preparation for the future, what’s your strategy?
Danny Mobley is the vice president of sales for The InterMed Group. He has more than 20 years’ experience in the health care industry.
