Nicholas Cram

Standards and Customer Satisfaction in the Healthcare Industry

Escalating costs, increasing demands, and implementing medical technology have prompted the creations of national healthcare quality assurances and standards. By considering the use of quality assurance in other fields (banking, tourism, and education), healthcare experts can design their own quality programs. The increasing debate of healthcare standards is discussed, as patient satisfaction is emphasized. The patient is the center of healthcares quality agenda. Biomedical companies incorporate quality management programs directed to satisfying the needs of the patient without neglecting the needs of their employees. Meeting the needs of the patient and creating healthcare standards are imperative to achieve high quality.

Technology assessment--a survey of the clinical engineer's role within the hospital.

Advancements in technology are vital to improve clinical outcomes within the medical community and, in particular, to healthcare systems. The need for a systematic approach to analyzing, assessing and selecting the best new technology for individual hospitals continues to increase in response to this technological growth. To determine the use of technology assessment, the effectiveness of different methods, and the role of clinical engineers and bioengineers in this process, a survey was conducted of clinical engineering departments throughout the United States. The results reveal that technology assessment programs are widely utilized as a team effort between hospital departments. Clinical engineers are playing a key role within these teams as technology managers.

Reducing Airborne Microbes in the Surgical Operating Theater and Other Clinical Settings: A Study Utilizing a Unique Photocatalytic Reactor Biocide Unit

The authors provide a research study examining the airborne microbial killing efficiency of a unique photocatalytic reactor (PCR) to eliminate fungal and bacterial pathogens. The study examines baseline bacterial and fungal cultures, commonly known as pathogens, collected at specific clinical sites. The cultures were incubated, and separate culture counts (colony-formed units, or CFUs) for specific microbes were recorded for the given clinical area. The samples are identified by gram stain and special growth media and samples of unique clinical interest such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are studied in depth, identifying genus and species in varying culture media. Samples and cultures are collected at specific times for a 24-hour period after the installation and use of the PCR biocide unit, revealing up to a 300% reduction of airborne microbes.

The Benefits of a Tele-Home Health Initiative on an Elderly Population

The age of the baby boomer generation (1946-1964) is upon us. With medical technology skyrocketing, one can assume that life expectancy will increase, and with it will come a larger population of geriatrics than medicine has ever seen. This growing population is being met by a shortage of nurses, which will cause major problems in the years to come. The looming lack of beds, healthcare dollars, and providers will raise ethical questions about which patients should receive care first. It is for these very reasons that the future of healthcare may well lie in tele-home health and tele-home medicine and preventative medicine. By definition, an engineer is one who plans, designs, constructs, and/or manages something. Can the clinical engineer develop new ways to solve healthcare problems through tele-home medicine and provide quality, affordable, and reliable healthcare to a booming society? The information below will address the advantages and concerns of this relatively new technology as it applies to an elderly population.

A Human Factors Checklist for Equipment Evaluation and Use

The patient-user-device interface of a medical device is within the domain of the clinical engineer. Adequate consideration of human factors issues with respect to these interfaces are essential to consider when assessing and implementing medical equipment in the clinical setting. The design of the device, the skills of the operator, the environment, and other operational features can have a dramatic impact on the effectiveness of a medical device. Therefore, competency and familiarity of the user, along with appropriate design techniques that consider human factors of operating a medical device, are critical to overall performance and safety. Establishment and repetition of procedures, and standardization of items with a checklist method, reduce the opportunities for human factor errors. The following checklist provides a guide for issues that should be addressed. While a checklist can never substitute for thoughtful and professional evaluation, or provide a detailed exposition of the underlying technical knowledge, it can, we believe, document an evaluation trail that must be followed.

The Relationship Between Clinical Engineers and Nurses in the Hospital

We all know that clinical engineering has become a necessary component of the healthcare system. This profession provides knowledge and leadership in maintaining, applying, acquiring, and managing safe and effective medical technology. Just providing the insight, however, is not enough. Clinical engineers must successfully work together with various clinical healthcare and support groups to ensure that the medical equipment within the hospital is used in a safe and effective manner. Unfortunately, a collaboration that has been addressed sparsely in practice and never in print is that between clinical engineers and nurses. A strong partnership has a win/win relationship for both groups and for clinical outcomes in general. It is because of these benefits that this relationship should start being emphasized and augmented in practice in every hospital.

The Role of Clinical Engineers in Reducing Medical Errors

Utilizing their knowledge of human factors, regulatory processes and principles of design and safety engineering, clinical engineers can have a major impact on reducing injuries, deaths, and clinical complications resulting from medical errors. These processes, which are part of the biomedical/clinical engineering curriculum, are inherent in minimizing healthcare hazards as well as reducing the risk of bad clinical outcomes resulting from the technology assessment process in selection of new medical devices. Medical equipment standardization and initial user training are essential concepts that must be employed to create a lower risk environment. Removing equipment that does not conform to the standardization process will provide a uniform process of clinical standards for patient treatment and thus increase the familiarity of medical equipment use. This familiarity will lower the risk of clinical errors related to technology frustration and inadvertent user error. Clinical engineers should be at the core of the technology assessment process and make their expertise known to hospital administrators. When hospital administrators realize that input from clinical engineers contribute to a safe environment within the hospital and thus affect the bottom line, their expertise will be a sought after value added commodity.

The State of the Healthcare System in Mexico

The healthcare system of Mexico has experienced marked progress over the past decades. However, health policy in Mexico faces important challenges in ensuring access for health of the entire population. This article will analyze the organization of the Mexican healthcare system, its quality and effectiveness, and recent reforms.

How the Internet has Changed Modern Medicine

Todays Internet includes everything from online shopping and banking to online ordering of pizzas, while healthcare has just begun to enter the domain of the Internet. In respect to e-health, only the tip of the iceberg has been viewed, as many aspects of healthcare are close to being available on the World Wide Web. With the amount of information technology increasing every day, healthcare is poised to take advantage. Various phenomena are forcing healthcare to move onto the Internet. An example of one of these phenomena is the new types of consumers, which look at healthcare as a business like any other company. Additionally, the development of certain devices in telemedicine and tele-home health will require the Internet as a medium for information transportation in the future. The possible cost effectiveness of having clinical services on the Internet also drives e-health toward implementation because of the money and time that can be saved by all participators. That is not even including the added convenience, which could possibly materialize e-health by itself. Although it sounds as if healthcare will be a perfect fit for the Internet, there are a large number of obstacles that must be avoided before any aspects of e-health are employed. Nevertheless, these obstacles will not stop e-health from fully emerging, just slow down the inevitable. As these problems are solved and more advanced technology is created, the next few years should see a major portion of healthcare carried out over the Internet, changing the face of healthcare forever.

Ethical issues of life-sustaining technology

Developments in medical technology have given physicians expanded means to sustain human life. In many instances, life sustaining treatments are administered despite the fact that the patient is unlikely to benefit from the medical intervention. Because of technology favoritism in society, life-sustaining technologies influence the availability, financing, and use of existing technologies. Healthcare organizations are attempting to guide treatment decisions by providing physicians and patients with thorough information about the efficacy of technologies. Programs such as hospice care, advance directives, technology assessment, and outcomes research, are reducing the occurrence of futile care. The paper considers how the development of high-tech, life-sustaining treatments present an ethical dilemma concerning equality of access to medical technologies, ethics of usage, cost and legal issues. >