by
Robert Garment, Executive Editor | September 01, 2016
From the August 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
A fairly large percentage of people only chose one answer, which was the case about 40 percent of the time. And oddly enough, “IT/software” was the No. 1 choice for those people, with “Mechanical” a close second and “User error” a distant third. What may be the most interesting takeaway from this entire exercise is the fact that “IT/software” was one of the top three categories in the clinical engineering survey and nobody even questioned it. That shows how ingrained IT has become in health care equipment and health care technology management.
The big challenges ahead The last question was open-ended with no prompting. It was: “What are the biggest challenges HTMs will face in the future regarding parts and service?” We were looking for short, one- or two-word answers, and we got them — except everyone phrased answers in their own way, so we did our best to compile the responses in categorical cubby holes that would give us comparative results. Parts overall and the ability to source them easily was clearly the number one concern. People modified their “parts” answers as you see below, with these corresponding percentages:
Parts Availability – 22 percent
Parts Quality – 15 percent
Right behind parts was concern about money
and controlling costs:
Cost control/Saving money – 20 percent
IT was right up there, too:
IT integration/technology – 14 percent
Getting software – 8 percent
IT-HTM clash – 4 percent
Near the middle/bottom were:
Repair turnaround time – 8 percent
Aging equipment/end-of-life issues – 8 percent
And finally, training came in last:
OEM training of in-house staff – 3 percent
Training (in general) – 2 percent
The bottom line To summarize the results of this survey, parts, quality spare parts and all the associated challenges involved with getting them — including a fair price — are top of mind with HTM professionals. Keeping costs down across the board is right up there with the parts procurement issue, and IT/software issues are also a challenge. All the other things that impact HTMs vary with importance depending on whom you speak with.
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