From the August 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


To Teahan, with all the talk of patients coming first, people aren’t putting their money where their mouths are. “In my opinion, people are placing too much emphasis on cost of service at the expense of patient outcomes and patient satisfaction.”

When a system goes down, that broken link disrupts the whole chain of care. “It’s not just the imaging portion — it’s the back up all down the line in the hospital,” Teahan says. “We can’t get a patient discharged, we can’t get a patient admitted.”


By maintaining service contracts and avoiding in-house options, Teahan is also able to reduce the time spent playing politics. “Bringing it in-house becomes more stressful and there’s more administrative arguments and bureaucratic wrangling internally if all of a sudden you have to purchase a part that’s $250,000. I never run into that problem. Do I have to pay a premium for that? Yes. Do I think the premium has value? Absolutely.”

Although Teahan holds partnerships with OEMs in high regard, they shouldn’t look at his way of thinking as a free pass. In the spirit of true partnership, he wants it to be a two-way street. According to Teahan going forward OEMs will need to better demonstrate the added value their service and parts supply delivers. They’ll need to more clearly define the total cost of ownership on equipment as well. “The OEMs also have a better ability, when they finally listen, to create an infrastructure that helps us all in the long run.”

With technology allowing more systems to be remotely monitored, that means there should be ample warning in most cases that maintenance is needed. “No piece of high-end imaging equipment doesn’t tell you electronically in advance that it is going to have a problem and the OEMs should develop systems to monitor that more than they do now,” says Teahan.

He points to MR scanners as prime example of that notification. “Ask anyone who takes care of MRI scanners and they will tell you that 95 percent of significant downtime is caused by the environmental specs not being met by the end user, e.g., chilled water conditioning, humidity and power — all of which can be monitored remotely.”

But the process needs improving. Teahan believes the OEMs need to be more proactive in tapping into that technology and providing solutions or preventing issues from occurring. He says he hasn’t had an OEM come in for an install yet to say they want data points to monitor not just the things on their side, but the issues on the hospitals side as well. So for instance, if the MR’s chiller shuts down in the middle of the night and sets off an alarm on their side, they could call to tell Teahan to turn it back on so that the machine is ready for patients in the morning. “My OEMs are in the process of doing this, we monitor everything else, but we’re not monitoring our machines,” he says.

August 2014 Magazine

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