Clinical engineering departments will soon have a web-based self-assessment tool through which to measure their practices and performance against those of similar departments at other facilities. This new tool will serve as the centerpiece of phase 2 of an ongoing benchmarking initiative established by the Technology Management Council (TMC) of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI).

AAMI has selected a firm called NeuraMetrics to create the web-based benchmarking tool and a team of AAMI members led by clinical engineering consultant Matt Baretich, CCE, to provide clinical engineering subject-matter expertise to the project.

The NeuraMetrics Tool
The tool will enable clinical engineering departments to have access to current, interesting, and useful information. Users will visit a special website and answer a set of discreet questions about clinical engineering performance, customer satisfaction, administrative perceptions, etc., and then compare their results with those of other facilities. These constantly updated data provide users with the ability to track their own progress over time.

The tool also allows users to compare their own data against that of similar facilities. For example, one can ask the program to show 'all 300- to 500-bed hospitals in the southeastern United States.'

According to Ray Laxton, a member of the TMC's Executive Committee, the TMC's benchmarking task force members "evaluated different approaches and different tools to provide the information we were seeking. NeuraMetrics was the most appealing because it not only facilitates the collection of data, but it also allows users to determine the relative importance of the various pieces of data for their respective facilities. I think those who participate in the process and use the tool will find it to be extremely valuable."

This project brings together NeuraMetric's extensive experience-which includes the development of online self-assessment tools for standards organizations, corporations, and consultants-with decades of clinical engineering expertise offered by the Baretich team.

The questions used in the self-assessment tool will be based on an overarching set of best practices and desirable behaviors, which will be defined by Baretich and his team.

"The fundamental objective of benchmarking is to identify opportunities for improvement," says Baretich. "This tool will allow users to compare themselves to their peers, however they wish to define them, and to look for 'best practices' they can implement in their own organizations. The tool will also provide reference material to help users take initial steps in pursuing the opportunities for improvement that they discover."

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