Position Statement of the HTMC MPTF on RCM
From HTMcommunityDB.org
(This page was last revised on 4-11-17.)
The role of healthcare technology management (HTM) is to ensure that all of the medical technology made available to healthcare providers is safe, effective and reliable. This requires that all medical technology be maintained in a manner that maximizes its safety, effectiveness and reliability, in a manner that is as cost-efficient as possible.
Unlike virtually all of the other high-risk industries such as civil aviation, NASA, the entire Department of Defense, the nuclear power industry, and the nuclear submarine industry, who long ago adopted the standardized, scientific methods used in the widely respected reliability centered maintenance (RCM) approach, maintenance in the healthcare technology management community (HTMC) has traditionally involved a variety of maintenance providers using a variety of different maintenance strategies that have not been executed in a standardized and consistent manner. The result has been an unfortunate inability to aggregate the data from these various maintenance activities into a statistically valid, sharable database, which – in turn - cripples the ability of both the device manufacturers and the healthcare community at large to determine which of the possible maintenance strategies are the most cost effective.
The potential economic impact is significant and the Maintenance Practices Task Force (MPTF) believes that an effort to encourage the healthcare technology maintenance community to transition to the scientific methods embedded in the RCM-based approach is long past due.
RCM is an ideal method to help institutions take advantage of the option to implement an Alternative Equipment Management (AEM) program as currently permitted by CMS, The Joint Commission (TJC) and the other accreditation organizations with deeming authority.
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