PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa. — Oct. 28 — Horror stories related to medical equipment for new construction or renovations are far too common. Hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars are wasted, and delays in go-live dates can stretch into months. ECRI Institute (www.ecri.org), an independent nonprofit that researches the best approaches to improving patient care, outlines a process for medical equipment issues and 6 best practices to ensure a better outcome in a just-released white paper, A $1 Million Change Order and a 6-Week Delay.
“Healthcare construction projects offer a once-in-a-decade opportunity to design and equip clinical environments so that clinical workflow and patient care is improved,” advises Thomas Skorup, MBA, FACHE, vice president of applied solutions, ECRI Institute. “However, we’ve seen too many projects derail when some critical issues are overlooked, such as not building infrastructure that can adapt to new technology and shelling out scarce resources for an unnecessary wish list of equipment.”
The new paper highlights some costly examples of what can happen when medical equipment planning issues aren’t well coordinated. It proposes a decision-making process which includes coordinating all stakeholders, providing expertise and vision, and using cost-effective technologies to ensure the hospital’s resources and quality of care are optimized. Two of the six best practices that ECRI Institute recommends in the paper include paying close attention to the preliminary equipment budget and keeping a watchful eye on the equipment creep.
The white paper, available for free download, draws upon ECRI Institute’s 40 years of experience in researching the safety, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of health technologies. Its medical equipment planning experience is gained from over $1 billion of medical construction projects, including patient towers at academic medical centers to 500,000-square-foot ambulatory care centers, renovated blood banks, and more.
Download the complimentary white paper, A $1 Million Change Order and a 6-Week Delay(C),( )from ECRI Institute’s Web site at https://www.ecri.org/Forms/Pages/MEP_White_Paper_2009.aspx.
For more information about ECRI Institute’s Medical Equipment Planning service, visit https://www.ecri.org/Products/Pages/medical_equipment_planning.aspx, or contact ECRI Institute by mail at 5200 Butler Pike, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462-1298, USA; by telephone at (610) 825-6000; by e-mail at consultants@ecri.org, or by fax at (610) 834-1275.
About ECRI Institute
ECRI Institute (www.ecri.org), a nonprofit organization, dedicates itself to bringing the discipline of applied scientific research to healthcare to discover which medical procedures, devices, drugs, and processes are best to enable improved patient care. As pioneers in this science for 40 years, ECRI Institute marries experience and independence with the objectivity of evidence-based research. ECRI Institute is designated a Collaborating Center of the World Health Organization and an Evidence-based Practice by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. ECRI Institute PSO, listed as a federally certified Patient Safety Organization by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, strives to achieve the highest levels of safety and quality in healthcare by collecting and analyzing patient safety information and sharing lessons learned and best practices.
SOURCE ECRI Institute
