Hospital Purchased Services Spend, Category 4: Biomed Repair and Maintenance Services

This article was written by Lisa Miller.

At VIE Healthcare Consulting we work with six categories of hospital purchased services spend. This blog looks at Biomed & Maintenance Services.

To review our summary of this entire series, click here.

Purchased services is that part of your organization’s spend that is contracted, purchased from or outsourced to a third party vendor, rather than carried out by your hospital’s in-house team.

Hospital Purchased Services Costs becoming increasingly complex and costly. Purchased services can account for up to 40%-50% of your organization’s non-labor spend yet hiding in your invoices is the potential for major savings which can dramatically improve your hospital’s margins.

Purchased services encompasses every department in your health system.

At VIE Healthcare Consulting we provide a framework for our clients to categorize their purchased services spend. That framework consists of six categories.

The fourth category is Biomed and Maintenance Services.

What Are Biomed Repair and Maintenance Services?

Biomed refers to the department that performs services on, and maintains, medical equipment. The individuals who work in this department are often referred to as Biomedical Equipment Technicians (BMET) or Biomedical Engineering Specialists (BMES). Their task is to ensure that medical equipment used in patient care is properly configured and functioning safely.

The importance of their roles cannot be understated as they work directly with the equipment that is responsible for determining patient conditions and delivering appropriate treatments.

Failure of medical equipment to work properly can mean the difference between life and death.

Outsourcing Biomed and Maintenance Services

Biomed services face the challenges of rapidly evolving technologies, working with mostly expensive equipment and the need for a quick turnaround when equipment needs to be repaired or replaced.

Due to these requirements, biomed staff must be trained and experienced in equipment that is used throughout the hospital. This is essential for optimizing patient care and maintaining the safety of both patients and staff.

The need to ensure biomed staff are readily available presents a challenge for many hospitals, which tend to be larger organizations with a wide variety of equipment that must operate around the clock.

This has led to the outsourcing of these services in order to ensure equipment is maintained and functioning properly at all times.

Biomed and Maintenance Services: Working With Vendors

Many vendors provide medical equipment leasing and rentals specifically for the healthcare industry.

These vendors specialize in renting and selling essential medical equipment like infusion pumps, ventilators, patient monitors and beds. They also offer certified biomedical services to ensure that the equipment they provide is safe, clean and functioning properly.

Companies that provide biomedical services will also often offer flexible and creative payment plans to work with your hospital’s budget.

Medical equipment is one of your hospital’s most costly investments, and without regular and expert maintenance, the risk of equipment failure increases exponentially. Regular maintenance will always cost less than an emergency repair. The cost of emergency repair or replacement is too high.

By allowing a dedicated vendor to provide and maintain medical equipment, clinicians can focus their time and effort into using that equipment to provide care to patients.

Biomed Repairs and Maintenance Services: What’s included?

Biomed Repair and maintenance services include the following:

• Diagnostic tools and expertise.
• Maintenance schedule.
• Specialty equipment.
• Scope management.

To learn more about using hospital purchased services as a leading strategy for cost reduction in healthcare, click here.

Invoice ROI™ from VIE Healthcare empowers your organization to analyze your purchased services invoice line item details for trends, reconciliation to the agreement and track these costs in real time to deliver actionable intelligence and real-time benchmarking.

For a complimentary consultation, call our office today at 1-888-484-3332, Ext 501 or email us at info@viehealthcare.com.