by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | May 30, 2014
From the May 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Heidi E. Horn, vice president of SSM Health Care’s Clinical Engineering Service department: I have not noticed a demand for more BMETS/clinical engineers, but I suspect that is due to the fact that capital budgets are indeed tightening at hospitals across the country, and hospitals are therefore not buying more clinical devices to warrant increasing their HTM staff. I have noticed a demand for the existing HTM staff to do more than they ever had to in the past. Because hospitals are becoming more and more dependent on clinical technology, and that technology is becoming more sophisticated. A typical clinical department leader does not have the expertise to sort through what the facility needs versus what the salesperson is trying to sell them and how that system will interface with the network, other hardware and software. In addition, when a hospital wants to interface a clinical device, IT can’t do it alone — HTM now needs to be involved.
Ron Padgett, director of Radiology Engineering, Radiology Services at Carolinas HealthCare System: I believe we will see a very slow growth, mostly due to higher expected efficiencies from all staff; and even though there is a demand for more in-house services, for every job in-house, someone in the outside sector generally loses.
Scott Bosch, manager of Biomedical Engineering for Park Nicollet Health Services: There’s a change in demand that has been apparent to everyone for some time now — the shift from bench tech to equipment specialist. We are asked directly and indirectly to fill roles in selection, acquisition, clinical operation support, interoperability and disposition of medical equipment along with the old roles of maintenance and safety. The desire for a competent clinical engineering/ HTM team will grow at a rate consistent with emerging technologies and the features of medical devices and systems.
HCBN: With budget tightening the continued norm, what steps are clinical engineers, or HTM taking to prove their value and maintain or increase budgets for their departments?
Rus Magoon, president of the Oregon Biomedical Association and Imaging Service Technicians with Legacy Health: One thing that I think most hospitals do is that they train their people because they need specialty service schools for a lot of equipment. It makes fiscal sense — the cost of having service contracts incredibly outweighs the cost of the service school — you might pay $15k for service school but $150k on a service contract that the training can alleviate.
