The impact of medical device availability on patient safety

Patient safety is a primary concern for all health systems and medical devices play a critical role in supporting the safe and effective delivery of patient care. Looking beyond the “break/fix” mentality of traditional clinical engineering services, health systems must consider ways to be more proactive and responsive for the safety of these devices, ensuring device availability, tracking device location to support delivery of care, protecting the security of medical devices and including safety of devices as a consideration in capital planning initiatives. Through this white paper we examine these key areas of comprehensive clinical asset management and discuss strategies for addressing each.