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Do you know how many hospital beds are in your facility? Can you tell, at a glance, what they are worth, when they need to be serviced, and when they should be replaced?
The biomedical engineering (biomed) department at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, CA, spearheaded, developed, and implemented a new, systemwide program for biomedical equipment life cycle management. The program would be capable of answering these and other questions related to every device in Hoag Health Network's facilities.
Bob Meninno, CBET, director of biomedical engineering at Hoag, said prior to this new program, “life cycle equipment planning was not a data-driven process for us. Rather, it was done anecdotally based on the discovery of equipment obsolescence or absence. There was an overall lack of strategic planning, which was costing a lot of money and a lot of time.”
For two years, Meninno and his biomed department, which is contracted out from Renovo Solutions, developed and implemented a new centralized program for managing all biomedical equipment at Hoag. The result was a biomedical device life cycle management system that is accurate, is easy to use, informs budget forecasting and planning, and, most importantly, benefits Hoag's patients.
Challenge
Previously at Hoag, equipment inventory, planning, and purchasing occurred in different departments: Clinical staff kept track of some of the devices, purchasing decisions were made by whomever decided it was time to get a new item, and the biomed department fixed everything. Meanwhile, accounting, purchasing, and the C-suite had to hunt down the information needed for budgeting and forecasting from various departments in the system.
At a Glance
SUBJECT
Hoag Health Network
LOCATION
Orange County, CA
SIZE
Nonprofit regional healthcare delivery network with more than 650 beds and treating nearly 30,000 inpatients and 350,000 outpatients per year
STAFF
Hoag's biomedical engineering department has 20 employees and manages more than 19,000 devices valued at $140 million.
With this noncentralized system, key data related to equipment purchasing, preventive maintenance, repairs, and decommissioning were not captured. This led to inaccurate counts for inventory and asset values, noncompliance with regulatory requirements, and increased unplanned capital purchases.
“The unplanned capital purchases were a clear sign of reactive rather than strategic planning. With unplanned capital purchases, we were just drawing cash out...