Wednesday, February 15, 2012 @ 1:00 pm Eastern Time
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently published a new directive requiring hospitals to adhere strictly to manufacturer recommendations for inspecting and maintaining critical care and imaging equipment in order to receive Medicare and Medicaid payments. This statement has drawn considerable comment and concern, since it contradicts the more flexible stance taken by the Joint Commission, which has allowed hospitals to use their experience to determine how often medical devices should be inspected. This flexibility has been widely supported in the literature and also by ECRI Institute.
The Joint Commission’s selective implementation is believed to have improved efficiency, allowed for more time to perform critical technology management activities, and saved hospitals money without negatively affecting safety, quality, or technology performance. Many hospitals believe that adhering strictly to manufacturer recommendations would be onerous, costly, and would negatively impact quality of care by diverting maintenance staff away from more critical safety-related activities.
In this 90-minute web conference, presenters from ECRI Institute will review how hospitals have been performing inspection and preventive maintenance before the directive and exploring what they would have to do to comply with it. Participants will also be anonymously surveyed during the webinar on how the CMS directive is expected to affect their operations and will have an opportunity to comment on how the directive will affect them in terms of time and money and the trade-offs that they will be forced to make. Participants will gain an understanding of how CMS inspection will affect them and, through examination of aggregated pre-conference questionnaire responses, will see where others stand.
Presenters will:
- Discuss potential impact the CMS directive will have on hospitals
- Seek and share input from participants on their concerns with the CMS preventive maintenance directive
- Discuss ECRI Institute’s plans for presenting recommendations to CMS for how it should revise its preventive maintenance directive
Moderator:
James P. Keller, Jr, MS
Vice President, Health Technology Evaluation and Safety
ECRI Institute
Presenters:
Tim Ritter, CBET, CCE
Senior Project Engineer, Health Devices
ECRI Institute
Jonathan Gaev, MSE, CCE, HEM, PMP
Director, Technical Programs, Health Devices
ECRI Institute
CLICK HERE for additional information.
CLICK HERE to register.
