Becker's Hospital Review

39 Sponsored by: The RX for financial well-being: Why leading health systems are turning to clinical asset informatics platforms F inancial health is top of mind for healthcare organizations. COVID-19 has driven many health systems to curtail capital spending budgets for new equipment. At the same time, increased demand for patient care has prompted healthcare and hospital executives to scrutinize their device inventories more closely to better understand utilization and demand. Unfortunately, a single source of truth rarely exists. Becker's Hospital Review recently spoke with two experts from TRIMEDX about the value of their clinical asset informatics platform. Dave Klumpe, president of clinical asset management solutions, and LeAnne Hester, chief marketing officer, discussed how such a platform can enhance device inventory visibility, proactively identify opportunities for improvement, drive fact-based capital planning decisions and enhance overall financial health. Clinical engineering — a source of truth for capital planning Sophisticated clinical engineering programs extend the life of medical equipment by using the latest technology to monitor the health of devices and provide integrated maintenance programs that extend equipment life with quality parts. When done properly through standardization, maintenance and repair can occur without incurring unplanned downtime, lowering the opportunity for patient safety risk This standardization is foundational to generating structured data that organizations can use in an intelligent way. "When planning for a clinical asset, some of the key variables that go into planning include how often the device breaks and is out of service," Mr. Klumpe said. "A standard definition for downtime, for example, enables hospitals to compare their medical device performance with that of other organizations with similar assets." A comprehensive clinical engineering program also includes robust informatics with important benchmarks about a health system's medical devices such as utilization, age and expected useful life. Based on patient volumes, the data also shows how many devices are needed to provide care. "As patient volumes shift across sites of care, health systems need devices in the right place at the right time," Ms. Hester said. "The only way to do that is by analyzing objective utilization information. Unfortunately, that kind of benchmark data isn't usually available to healthcare leaders." Clinical asset informatics platforms promote inventory visibility and fact-based conversations about resource allocation. Industry-leading clinical asset informatics platforms provide a single source of truth because there is one system of record for all medical devices that the organization owns, including how many devices are in their inventory, how many times devices have broken and when preventive maintenance was last conducted. Without that single source of truth, health systems often struggle. Benchmark data on asset age and reliability provides health systems with transparent information about how their devices are performing relative to other organizations using the same types of assets and relative to national averages. "The key for improving financial health is having objective data the CFO and CEO can use during conversations with the chief nursing officer or the chief medical officer," Ms. Hester said. "The visibility and objective data that enable those conversations really has to come from clinical asset informatics." These executive-level conversations empower clinical leaders with the information necessary to communicate with their teams about the thought process behind capital resource management and deliver assurances that their equipment requests are being heard and strategically prioritized. "When employees tell the CFO a device is very old and needs to be replaced, we often find the device isn't that old relative to other health systems using the same asset," Mr. Klumpe said. "We can provide a fact-based view for health systems to use when scrutinizing new investments." To qualify asset inventory recommendations, TRIMEDX has developed a proprietary algorithm, called the RUDR Score. Based on this score, organizations can decide whether to replace, upgrade, reallocate or dispose of medical equipment. These actions are crucial inputs to the capital planning process. "Based on utilization, we can determine the right number of devices to replace, which can save on capital expenses," Mr. Klumpe said. "For example, an organization may have 20 devices that are at end of life, but they only need 10. By extending the useful life of equipment through maintenance, we can also help organizations defer spending and stretch their dollars." Conclusion Technology-based solutions like clinical asset informatics platforms highlight intersections between multiple sources of data and help drive decisions related to medical equipment inventory management. Objective information and national comparative benchmarks can be powerful enablers to the strategic planning process for health systems. "We are seeing a continued shift of care to lower-cost settings like ASCs, as well as home care with telehealth," Ms. Hester said. "After the COVID-19 crisis, the strategic planning process will become critically important. Healthcare organizations must learn to manage new consumer behavior patterns and align their devices accordingly." n TRIMEDX is an industry-leading, independent clinical asset management company in the United States delivering comprehensive clinical engineering services, clinical asset informatics and medical device cybersecurity. We help healthcare providers transform their clinical assets into strategic tools, driving reductions in operational expenses, optimizing clinical asset capital spend, maximizing resources for patient care, and delivering improved safety and protection. TRIMEDX was built by providers, for providers, and leverages a history of expert clinical engineering with data on 92% of all active medical device models.

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