Did you catch our podcasts earlier this month on benchmarking? “The Importance of Benchmarking” is a three-part series that only takes a few minutes to listen to and features our guest Matthew F. Baretich, PE, PhD, president of Baretich Engineering Inc, Fort Collins, Colo.

Matt defines benchmarking and its benefits, what information a clinical/biomedical engineering department needs to collect, and what to do with the information once you have it.

Improving performance is a natural outcome, and a part of all this is best practices. In the podcast, Matt shares that “best practices are tools you can use to achieve your benchmarks.”

How has benchmarking worked for you? What benefits have you seen? We hope you’ll share your tips on benchmarking and the best practices that have helped you reach your goals. If you didn’t get a chance to listen to the free podcast, you can find it on our Web site.

Thanks for all your input so far in connecting with us and your fellow biomeds on our best practices blog. We love to hear about what works for you, but we also want to know how you come up with new procedures.
 
All best practices have to come from somewhere, and developing the real gems takes time and teamwork.
 
One method of developing them that some hospitals are starting to adopt is to form a best practices committee with members from different departments to evaluate the effectiveness of new solutions and develop new practice guidelines for the facility. Committees then vet ideas and hammer them into workable procedures.

Topics the committees address include working with IT to find solutions to cross-departmental problems and evaluating scheduled maintenance procedures for specific types of equipment.

How do you find out what works?

A feature in our August issue focused on the FDA’s Medical Product Safety Network, better known as MedSun. One of the differences between MedSun and MedWatch is that MedSun purposely involves biomeds in the program. In the article, biomeds from participating MedSun hospitals talked about the benefits received, such as attending national conferences MedSun holds as well as regional conferences that allow for more intimate interaction with biomeds in the same region.

If you’re a MedSun reporting hospital, we hope you'll share some ‘best practices’ from the program.

Welcome to 24x7's Best Practices blog. This is Stephen Noonoo, 24x7’s associate editor and now (sometimes) blogger.

To get started, 24x7’s April 2009 article Linked In describes how the biomed department at Sonora Regional Medical Center of Adventist Health in Sonora, Calif, went completely paperless. Driving the ambitious green initiative was the department’s computerized maintenance management software (CMMS).
 
CMMS can provide untold benefits to hospitals, bringing computerized organization and efficiencies to the biomed department. In addition to helping schedule regular preventive maintenance, it can help with inventory control, and purchase order management. Some can even help with asset management.
 
How do you use CMMS? To go paperless? To keep track of preventative maintenance?
 
Are there any unique uses of the program you’ve found, and what’s the best way to use it?
 
Let us know. Your tips could save a colleague some badly needed time.

 

Bill Cassel, biomedical engineering supervisor, Orlando Health, Fla, has a great idea that he would like to see put in place and would like some suggestions. Here’s his idea:

“I would like to see a “bookmark” or free access Web site that would have PDF copies of “end of life” letters for equipment. Most manufacturers do not have this information readily available on their Web sites and it would make budgeting for new equipment or knowing what we may not be able to find parts for much easier.”

Any thoughts on how to initiate this? All are welcome to comment on this blog and your suggestions are appreciated!