HTM Professionals Advised to Get Outside Comfort Zones
Standing in front of a room full of biomeds, Heidi Horn started talking about the classic book “Alice in Wonderland.” Specifically, Horn, vice president of Clinical Engineering Service at SSM Health Care, described an exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in which Alice seeks help finding her way, but doesn’t know which road to take. The gist of the cat’s reply to Alice was that if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do.
That message, Horn said, ought to resonate with healthcare technology management (HTM) professionals. At a time when medical technology is advancing rapidly and the delivery of healthcare itself is undergoing fundamental changes, HTM professionals need to craft their own vision for the future before they can figure out how to get there.
And that vision, Horn said, is one in which biomeds are far more than repair technicians, serving as the medical technology experts at their facilities and taking leadership roles in helping their facilities cut costs, manage complicated and increasingly integrated systems, and supporting the overriding goal of safe patient care. More clinical engineering (or HTM) departments are doing just that, and many leaders in the field are working hard to position their teams for the future. Horn and others suggested that changes need to come faster.
“In order for us to remain valuable, it ‘s absolutely imperative to get outside our normal comfort zones of just being the repair tech,” Horn said in a presentation Sunday. Horn’s message was one that was repeated by multiple speakers at the AAMI 2013 Conference & Expo in Long Beach, CA.
“We can no longer rely on the way we’ve always done things,” said Russ Branzell, CEO and president of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME). Branzell, who spoke at a separate session, described today’s healthcare landscape as both exciting and challenging. It is, he said, “a perfect storm.” On the one hand, there’s more technology than ever before. On the other hand, there’s incredible pressure on hospitals and other healthcare facilities to cut costs.
HTM professionals can help their facilities navigate the shoals by taking the initiative to become the go-to resource on all things related to medical technology, starting with purchasing and planning, covering integration, and including the management of multiple systems.
Said Horn: “Anytime medical equipment is involved, you need to be able to say, ‘I’ve got it. This is my baby.’ “
To illustrate her point, Horn presented a series of slides that detailed what she described as the differences between a biomed shop and the “ultimate” HTM department. For example, a biomed shop might use a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) simply to track preventive maintenance. An “ultimate” HTM department, she said, would use CMMS to do that and more, such as tracking the costs of maintenance, and collecting data that could guide the C-Suite. Horn emphasized that her intent was not to slight the vital work of medical device repair and maintenance--which she said must remain part of the portfolio—but to demonstrate that unless biomed departments assume new responsibilities and demonstrate their value to the C-Suite, they could see their work outsourced.
In revamping the organization and philosophy of her own team, Horn said, “I started this quite honestly as complete self-preservation.”
Posted: 06.02.13