Our February Focus On column references an emergency exercise at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, NY. In the exercise, doctors, biomeds, and other hospital staff ran through all the necessary steps of dealing with a hospital-wide pandemic flu emergency, from checking patients in, to setting up equipment, to stemming the spread of contamination.

Joint Commission regulations require facilities to undertake regular emergency exercises to test how plans on paper will fare during an actual emergency situation.  

While the staff at Westchester Medical performed well in the drill, there were still some bumps in the road. "There were a couple things, like finding outlets for the equipment and running phone lines to the right places, that until we actually put the physical structures in place, we didn't think about," says Garret Doering, the hospital's director of emergency management.

On the heels of an upcoming Joint Commission conference on effective emergency preparation strategies, we invite you to share your department’s experience with emergency equipment plans. What are some of the strategies your hospital is putting on paper and what are the most efficient ways to test it?

If you're a frequent visitor to the 24x7 blog, you may have noticed this article (Showing Value by Alfred Winnberry) on how in-house biomed programs can show value to their organizations, which was posted in the comment section of our Getting What You Want blog.

If not, I encourage you to read it for a good discussion on effective documenting strategies in-house programs can turn around to hospital administrators.  

Recently, I spoke to a biomed about the pros and cons of in-house departments and third party servicers. In-house programs, he noted, naturally lose money on paper, so justifying their existence must then ultimately become about showing how they add quality and save more money than they spend. Hospitals may oscillate back and forth between going in-house and contracting services out, until they can determine which of the two gets the most bang for their buck.

The article's author suggests showing a cost comparison for necessary parts and labor between OEMs, the in-house program, and any local ISOs. Can the in-house biomeds prove they can do it the cheapest?

If you work in-house, what does your hospital expect from your department documentation wise? How do you show them you're saving money while maintaining a well-supplied, quality department?

With the 2009 annual compensation survey now online, many of you may be contemplating your own value to your organization, and the best ways advance your own career.

Desirable positions often call for direct related experience, but for those without it, making the leap may be a hard sell. Talking up existing accomplishments can prove a successful strategy.   

When applying for a position in management, for example, a biomed without hospital supervision experience might choose to showcase their leadership capabilities through events they’ve organized for their local biomedical association, or talk about projects they’ve helped with at work outside the usual scope of their abilities.

We invite you to think (and talk) about what fares best with potential employers. What skills did you highlight when interviewing for your present position?

 

When working on an unfamiliar or particularly challenging piece of equipment, sometimes just finding the problem to fix can be a bit tricky. Resources such as service manuals, advice from colleagues, or even the Internet can all be indispensable when troubleshooting, but sometimes an out-of-the-box solution can yield the best results.

When biomed and clinical laboratory equipment specialist Jon Sears with the Baltimore VA is having difficulty, oftentimes he will go straight to the equipment vendors themselves.

“It’s just a matter of getting through the tech support people,” he says. “If you can get through the front lines to the engineering group, they’re just like any other engineering group out there. They don’t mind pointing you in the right direction to work on things. A lot of times most of the engineering is reserved for most of the company’s field service representatives, but a lot of times they’ll talk to you.”

Sears also uses his background to build rapport with vendors. Taking time to build a relationship and a level of trust with vendor service departments has paid off for Sears, who turns to them for more than just troubleshooting advice.

“A lot of times I’ll call them up and I’ll take to them about reference manuals or files I need. A lot of the time they have it on their computers and they’ll just e-mail the file."

We’re interested to hear about any go-to troubleshooting techniques and tips you’ve picked up. Have you opened any doors thought previously closed?

 

In our October Focus On column, we explored the CDRH’s radical new approach to spotting medical device safety issues before they become problems. The CDRH has reorganized its safety reporting methods to involve every employee throughout the center, by incorporating Matrix organization elements.

A Matrix design places staff members from different departments under new supervisors who oversee a specific part of a particular project. The unique organizational structure gets its name from a Matrix table, where all elements are represented in both rows and columns. Employees continue to report to their existing manager, but also work closely with other project managers who oversee aspects of a particular project.

A Matrix approach is ideal for special, temporary, or ongoing projects that rely on cooperation from multiple departments. In a hospital, for example, organizing staff into a Matrix structure may be suitable for researching, purchasing, and setting up new equipment, or for special projects requiring close interaction between biomeds and IT.

Have you used a Matrix reporting structure for any project? Any tips on the best way to organize it? What works for keeping everyone on track during special projects—and, likewise, what doesn’t?  

 

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?

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.