by
Loren Bonner, DOTmed News Online Editor | July 09, 2012
From the July 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Experts working in the field second this. Matt Baretich, president of Baretich Engineering, says he’s followed the Joint Commission’s lead successfully through the years.
“We’ve been doing this for a long time and we don’t see patient safety issues. In other words, where we do use our experience and we back off manufacturers’ requests, it hasn’t caused any additional hazard for patients,” says Baretich.
People like Baretich want to demonstrate to CMS that the Joint Commission’s accreditation process for medical equipment and facilities equipment maintenance is safe and should be allowed to continue without interruption.
The costs of the rule
Experts agree that the CMS directive significantly changes the amount of maintenance work for biomeds.
Evaluating a GE 8 Channel Body
Array Coil. Image courtesy
of Oxford Instruments.
“When you look at clinical engineering work, 80 percent of a technician’s time is spent on preventative maintenance and repair, split evenly. So if you figure 40 percent of the time is spent on maintenance, anything that changes the amount of maintenance they have to do greatly affects the work load,” says Jonathan Gaev, ECRI Institute’s business line manager for BiomedicalBenchmark.
Baretich says it adds an even greater financial burden to hospital budgets. “Some estimates have been developed in the billions of dollar per year range for the impact of say, adding additional staff and time, and there’s some stringent documentation required that would add to the paperwork.”
Clinical engineering departments within facilities are also wary about going to their bosses and asking for a budget increase, especially as hospitals are trying to cut back on spending. For third party providers, it’s a similar story.
“They are saying: we don’t want to go to our clients and say we’re going to have to charge you more,” says Baretich.
According to the Joint Commission’s Mills, experts in the field have estimated that the exact cost of maintaining clinical engineering and facilities equipment will be increased from the CMS guidelines by two to five billion dollars for hospitals participating in CMS funding based on additional full-time equivalents, service contracts and man-hours.
Todd Schmechel
CMS vs Biomed?
July 16, 2012 04:36
I have found hospitals that have really gone too far with their experience based PM's. Some are running certain items to fail, then PM'ing them. That is no way to save money. There needs to be a middle ground between what CMS mandated and some of the extremes I've experienced.
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