Care New England Health System

Care New England Health System evolved its clinic engineering to a holistic strategy that creates standardization and collaboration across the entire healthcare enterprise and saved them $740,000+ in CE spend.

Clinical Engineering Solutions

Care New England (CNE) Health System is an example of a progressive healthcare group who understands today’s complex healthcare technology landscape and need for holistic clinical engineering (CE) strategy.

Comprised of three hospitals and other affiliates located in and around Providence, Rhode Island, CNE relies heavily on its healthcare technology to help provide world-class patient care, with combined inventory of more than 14,000 medical devices and assets.

CHALLENGE

After CMS and TJC changed medical equipment maintenance and management requirements in 2013, CNE needed to revise its current policies and practices to align with the new standards. They enlisted the help of ABM, who revamped the CE program and set them on the right path to timely and cost-effective compliance.

At around the same time, CNE added another hospital to its growing network. Each member hospital managed clinical engineering differently -- some outsourced while others handled it in-house.

With disparate CE departments, each hospital oversaw its own staff, budgets, and contracts. Information was siloed, so they had no visibility into the true scope and spend of clinical engineering across the system.

SOLUTION

Working together, CNE and ABM developed a customized enterprise business solution to more strategically and efficiently manage healthcare technology across all CNE member hospitals.

ABM guided CNE to form a leadership task force that included representatives of all member hospitals.

This collaborative process allowed them to establish organization-wide best practices; initiate metrics and analytics; create auditable controls; and implement new policies, procedures, and protocols.

The program included the implementation of:

A system-wide labor infrastructure
Professional technology leadership and management
Automated, web-based enterprise technology management system
Standardized operations and system delivery
Quality, productivity, and cost performance metrics

The enterprise management system centralized, streamlined, and automated clinical engineering operations, allowing CNE to better manage assets and contracts, schedule and track maintenance requests and work orders, access and share data, and automate reporting.

Web-based, the system also speeds maintenance activities, increases productivity, and reduces delays and downtime. Technicians receive alerts on their phones,

Healthcare

Case Study: Care New England Health System

and the system also provides real-time client feedback, increasing user satisfaction.

Because of the large scope of the project, the solution was deployed in phases. This minimized disruption and maximized savings opportunities while ensuring employees were successfully adopting and using the solution.

BENEFIT

CNE’s enterprise strategy provides more comprehensive service to member hospitals and helped drive standardization, quality, and best practices for clinical engineering and associated systems. The initiative has also provided CNE with transparency and accountability of all CE projects, inventory, and capital procurement.

Introduced best practices for clinical engineering and associated systems
Recognized as national best practice in the industry
CE spend to be reduced by an estimated $2 million over the next five years

Once dependent on outside labor, CNE has leveraged the efficiencies and economies of scale created by the enterprise system to simplify and convert most service contracts to self-performance. Now work for all hospitals is done in-house with a seasoned team of clinical and biomedical engineering technicians managed by ABM.

The new system has also allowed the CE team to be more proactive in identifying and solving healthcare technology management issues. An example of this was a temperature monitoring system that was not being used to its full potential. Because of integration, the CE and IT teams worked closely together to redefine how to support the

“Working with a trusted partner like ABM was critical to our success. Leveraging their experience and expertise, we were able to avoid costly pitfalls, minimize risks and disruptions, and speed implementation,” said

Steve Silva, Vice President of Supply Chain for Care New England Health System.

system, streamline the troubleshooting process, and resolve the problem.

The CE team’s efforts were recognized by the Association for Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI), who praised the “collaborative, silo-breaking” approach and presented them with its 2016 Bright Ideas award. The national award recognizes organizations for tackling tough healthcare technology management challenges with innovative solutions.

CNE’s new enterprise approach is a perfect illustration of the evolution of healthcare technology in the industry. The journey has taken CNE from providing disparate and commoditized basic services to allowing them to offer comprehensive, integrated healthcare technology management that incorporates compliance, biomedical, and clinical engineering support for all member hospitals.

About ABM

ABM (NYSE: ABM) is a leading provider of facility services in the United States and various international locations. ABM’s comprehensive capabilities include janitorial, electrical & lighting, energy solutions, facilities engineering, HVAC & mechanical, landscape & turf, mission critical solutions and parking, provided through stand-alone or integrated solutions. ABM provides custom facility solutions in urban, suburban and rural areas to properties of all sizes - from schools and commercial buildings to hospitals, data centers, manufacturing plants and airports. ABM Industries Incorporated, which operates through its subsidiaries, was founded in 1909. For more information, visit ABM.com.

866.624.1520 ABM.com/Healthcare

Care New England Health System – Clinical Engineering Solutions