by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | August 19, 2015
From the August 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Koford of Intermountain says the health system put together a committee of imaging managers and clinical engineering managers and directors, took 18 months to look at all the options, including third-party and insurance options, and aimed to figure out the arrangement that would increase uptime, decrease contract costs and create better response times.
They decided to bring most equipment in-house, aside from CT and MR, which are serviced through a partnership type relationship with the OEMs. “I think we’ll always need to maintain the relationships with our OEMs to a certain level,” Koford says.
“The relationships assure us we’re working closely with our OEMs to service the equipment.” Intermountain has three levels of imaging engineers. The Level 1 engineers work on laser imagers and injectors, Level 2 engineers work on X-ray machines, C-arms and some CT and MR machines and Level 3 engineers work on all equipment.
“We prefer engineers that have had imaging experience,” Koford says. To determine the system’s training budget for the fiscal year, Koford says they look at what equipment their team can take on in the next year, and at the cost-to-benefit ratio, justifying the training budget by each piece of equipment.
Parts and training
Cover says RSTI’s dedication to training separates it from competitors, many of which provide training in addition to their main business of selling parts. Jeremy Probst, chief operating officer of Technical Prospects, is at a company that offers training on Siemens equipment as well as parts.
Probst’s father, Robert Probst, worked as a CT service engineer for Siemens for 18 years, then started buying and selling systems and doing turnkey installations, before moving into warehousing parts. In March 2014, the company completed construction of a $2 million training facility. Training was a natural extension of Technical Prospects’ parts business, Jeremy Probst says.
The company already had Siemens imaging equipment set up for testing and repair, and adding training follows the shift of hospitals using independent service organizations and in-house service programs to lower costs. Technical Prospects trains engineers from ISOs and hospitals, and they can take advantage of the discount on parts. “If they’re servicing the equipment and have to buy parts from Siemens, they’re paying 30 to 80 percent more,” Jeremy Probst says.
Koford says it’s helpful to “test the waters” of a parts provider by taking training courses from them first, then buying a limited number of the parts. “It’s really tough to just jump in with both feet and not know what you’re getting into,” Koford says.
