When Southeast Alabama Medical Center (SAMC) in Dothan, Ala began to hear about the difficulties in finding hospital assets in a timely manner from patients and staff alike, the complaints did not fall on deaf ears.

For one thing, biomeds found the process of performing preventive maintenance cumbersome. “As the month goes on there’s less and less PMs that are due for maintenance and it gets tougher and tougher to find them,” says one SAMC biomed.

Furthermore, patients were also getting lost in the shuffle. “There were certain instances where patients were at the front door waiting for wheelchairs and they were starting to get disgruntled,” says Scott Lapham, senior network engineer at SAMC.

The hospital evaluated the concerns and implemented a wide-reaching RTLS, which tracks a variety of equipment and non-equipment assets, helping to clear up these issues—particularly helping biomeds with PM compliance. And people have started to notice, as Lapham says he hears staff praise these new efficiencies almost every day.

We’re interested in hearing other best practices for evaluating feedback and making changes. How is feedback given and received in your facility? And feed free to share any specific instances.

Valdez Bravo, a biomedical equipment support specialist at Portland VA Medical Center in Oregon would appreciate your input on how to create a biomedical equipment repair forum that biomeds in developing nations could access to interact with US biomedical equipment techs—or biomeds from other countries as well—to assist with locating literature, parts, solutions, etc.

Here’s what Valdez said: “The idea stems from my time in March 2008 when I traveled to JFK Medical Center in Monrovia, Liberia. I was there with a nonprofit called Project HOPE. We were rebuilding the medical center that had basically been destroyed during Liberia’s 10-year civil war. The experience was amazing, and I was able to fix a lot of things, but many issues could have been resolved if the Liberian’s (who speak English) could have had an e-mail address or forum location to direct questions to. These were very smart individuals who were excellent in electronics, but needed just a little bit of info in order to do a lot of good.”

He doesn’t want to “reinvent the wheel” so if you know of a good site already in operation, or you have ideas, please comment here and see what you can all “virtually” build together. Thanks!

In our May "Up Font" column, we discussed the risk of exposure we all face through the growing availability of patient information disseminated to many people through multiple devices. Earlier this year, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal filed a lawsuit against Health Net of Connecticut, claiming the company did not secure patient medical records and financial information prior to a security breach that affected 446,000 Connecticut enrollees.

Has your organization taken steps to encrypt patient information? Share your best practices on how your facility and department work to mitigate this serious risk to our privacy.

At the end of June, the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) will hold its annual conference and expo. In addition to numerous educational sessions, organizations hold special roundtables and sessions, there’s a career fair, networking with colleagues, and an exhibit hall. How do you make the most of your time? How do you decide what sessions to attend?

Comment on this blog and share your best ideas on how to maximize your time at AAMI and other conferences.

I recently received a call from Simon Miranda, chief of biomedical engineering services at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. He wanted to know if there was any definitive information on how to determine an individual’s workload in the industry.

He has a method but is open to ideas. 24x7’s current poll asks a related question: In determining the minimal staffing level required to run an effective biomedical engineering program, is the unit of service (UOS) based on inventory or patient adjusted discharged?

At this point, 89.8% have said inventory, but how do you determine this? Do you look at the complexity of the device? The equipment’s age? We hope you’ll comment on the blog and help answer Simon’s question: How do you determine an individual’s workload in the industry? Thanks!