Best Practices in Managing Medical Equipment Rollouts

With tech advancing seemingly at the speed of light, healthcare delivery facilities are constantly upgrading their technologies to enhance the quality of patient care and the delivery of critical services. However, the process of introducing new medical equipment is not as simple as just the installation of the equipment. 

Successful implementation of equipment makes all the difference between a seamless changeover and a poorly executed one that interferes with the delivery of patient care.  

The importance of purposeful and accurate planning  

Successful medical equipment deployments start with stakeholder engagement. The stakeholders include clinicians, IT departments, facility representatives, and hospital administration representatives. These stakeholders hold diverse jobs and points of view and know the ins and outs of their individual needs. This approach guarantees that the entire organization is involved in the deployment and is tailored to the needs of those using the equipment daily.  

The creation of a deployment timeline requires attention to detail. It is better to work backward from the clinical requirements, including the training windows, the examination periods, and the integration testing. The best project managers know that healthcare environments are full of unknowns, and therefore, they build buffer times into every phase. Conversely, the best vendors act as real partners, not just as suppliers.

Procurement /Sourcing Dept must define goals and reporting levels in the service level agreements and establish clear communication channels. The ideal vendors are experienced and can give guidance during implementation.

The ins and outs of compliance

Healthcare equipment deployments are accompanied by risks that cannot be avoided and must be prevented. Here are a few steps that hospitals can take to make sure they are compliant:

• Perform a thorough Failure Mode and Effects Analysis on each piece of equipment to determine how it could fail and affect patient care and provide a backup plan in case of failure.
• Develop a plan for each risk, describing the control implemented should the event occur. The most preventable risk factor is communication failure.
• Develop clear escalation paths and ensure that clear lines of command allow the people making decisions to do so quickly. Daily status meetings can detect minor problems before they become much larger problems. For instance, we installed anesthesia machines in the operating rooms at one of my high-priority projects. Technicians were required to work outside of regular business hours. To ensure smooth and efficient communication before and during installation, I created a group text message with key members directly involved in deploying the project. As the Project Manager, I regularly updated all stakeholders through daily emails and weekly meetings. This approach kept everyone connected and informed based on their level of involvement and need for awareness throughout the process. The safety of the patient is always a concern during the deployment. Only after mimicking the use of new equipment in the clinical setting can their use be allowed in actual patient care.  
• The use of medical equipment cannot be implemented without meeting all legal and regulatory requirements. This is where Sourcing and Information Security (IT Infosec) play a critical role in ensuring that all necessary documentation is obtained to confirm the product’s compliance with relevant standards and regulations, including FDA guidelines, when applicable. This process also includes reviewing embedded software and verifying the manufacturer’s compliance. This documentation is extremely important for regulatory audits and supports budget justification and future upgrade planning. In my current role, before issuing a purchase order, our project team ensures that the equipment has fulfilled all legal and compliance requirements. From there, if any software updates are needed, we assess whether they will be performed by the vendor or handled in-house and determine the deployment method, especially when dealing with sensitive patient data in adherence to HIPAA regulations.
• Validation is the process of checking whether the equipment is capable of working as intended in your particular environment. It is also necessary to check how the device operates during both regular and abnormal conditions that may occur during its use. For instance, high-priority equipment (such as ventilators, patient monitors, and others) needs to have a battery backup in case of power outages. Once the equipment is live,  technical and clinical teams should sign off to show that the equipment is good to go regarding performance and user expectations.

Workforce training and adoption 

The effectiveness of even the best medical technology relies on its proper use. For this reason, it’s important to meet people where they are and provide training in stages with different methods for different learners and levels of technical sophistication. 

A few ways to do this are to provide practical training sessions, tutorials, and micro-learning segments.  The super users selected from the staff to provide additional training and support to other members of the department act as a way of guaranteeing the continuity of the knowledge within the departments. These people translate the technical language used to describe the equipment and its use into the everyday language that the clinician will understand and use.  

Competency tests should measure the effectiveness of this training. These should be based on the actual use of the product and factor in not only the technical use but also on how it can be integrated into the current workflow. In my workplace, deployment cannot happen unless 80% of the staff in the department where the equipment will be used have successfully completed training. The trainer also keeps a record of the attendees who attended the training to perform training compliance.

It is important to have support materials such as quick reference guides and troubleshooting guides to ensure that the users can maintain the requisite level of competency even after the training is complete. 

The deployment process will generate data that can be used for future deployments. This data should include the timeline, cost, delivery, installation process, and user satisfaction during the pre-implementation and implementation phases. They allow for a quantitative analysis of the equipment rollout and help to assess where there is room for improvement.  The 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day post-implementation reviews are crucial to address the new challenges and evaluate the changes within the clinical performance. Reviews must be based on the input of the end users who spend the most time with the equipment and, therefore, can provide information that might be relevant to the project management team.  It goes without saying that the usage analytics of the deployed equipment will help further improve the equipment. These analytics reveal whether there are unused features that may need more training or whether there are unexpected usage patterns that may indicate poor workflow or unmet needs. 

Healthcare facilities cannot stop their patient care services during equipment changes. Strategies that can be implemented to avoid interference and ensure that each clinical department can continue its operations during deployment include temporary dual systems, step-by-step implementation of departments, implementing phases or integrating the new system during low peak periods.  Data backup is also a critical process that helps minimize risks encountered during the transition process. Conversely, downtime procedures should be explained in detail, as well as the analog options for digital systems and any emergency action plans. 

Medical equipment deployment is a process of combining the new technology with the existing organizational structure without disrupting the delivery of patient care. Effective roll-out strategies incorporate planning, stakeholder management, and performance monitoring to ensure that healthcare organizations can integrate new equipment without compromising the quality of service being delivered to the patients.

Photo: chanut iamnoy, Getty Images

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