Hospitals are under pressure to cut costs while managing increasingly complex technology environments. But according to Matthew Dummart, healthcare technology management (HTM) director for Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin, many vendor service models are still designed around individual products rather than the broader needs of a health system.

That disconnect can create challenges for HTM teams responsible for compliance, documentation, and equipment performance across multiple facilities. In this Health Care Business News exclusive, Dummart discusses where vendors often miss the mark, why fleet-wide thinking matters, and what separates trusted partners from those he deems transactional.

His responses have been edited for brevity.
HCB News: You take the position that when manufacturers pitch service solutions to healthcare organizations, they often miss the mark on what HTM teams need. Why?
Matthew Dummart: Vendors often miss the mark because they approach service from a “product-centric” mindset instead of a fleet-centric one. OEMs think in terms of their device, their procedures, and their FDA regulatory obligations, all of which focus on the product lifecycle from premarket to postmarket. HTM, however, is responsible for the entire ecosystem of equipment and follows frameworks from regulatory agencies and accreditation bodies that impose requirements on hospitals—not the OEM—including every device, every modality, and every location, regardless of ownership.

In essence, OEMs are following two different playbooks. In fact, they are playing two different games. This is what makes the Right-to-Repair discussion so complex. It’s like a married couple arguing about how to plant a garden, without realizing one wants a vegetable garden and the other wants a butterfly garden. Neither is recognizing that the design inputs are fundamentally different because they are working from different frameworks.

When a vendor pitches a service model that bypasses HTM or assumes the OEM will “handle everything,” it creates real problems. HTM still has to maintain the documentation, keep the CMMS accurate, and be ready to sit in front of auditors who expect complete, real-time records. If the service workflow doesn’t flow through HTM, the hospital is at regulatory risk. That disconnect is one of the biggest misses I see. Someday, I would love to be part of building the OEM/HTM hybrid vegetable/butterfly garden, but we have some work to do on that.

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