Design and Development of a Model to Optimize the Clinical Engineering Department Size within a Hospital

The purpose of this study is to determine the optimum number of technicians within a clinical engineering department, based on the time and resources needed to properly maintain the medical equipment within the hospital. This project will study the number of biomedical technicians within a Clinical Engineering department and each technician's time from the past five years from three different sized hospitals. From that information, a model will be developed in order to optimize the number of technicians within the clinical engineering department. This model will include the following: A) The model will show the staffing numbers at Baystate Medical Center from previous years compared to the number of technicians that would have been most productive during that time, and use this information to predict the future optimum size of the department. B) This model will show the optimum breakdown of staff within different subdivisions of the department, including Radiology, Imaging and General Biomed. C) The model will evaluate the optimum department sizes for three different sized hospitals and portray the relationship between hospital volume and optimum clinical engineering department size. These three hospitals include Baystate Medical Center (BMC), Franklin Medical Center (FMC) and Marylane Hospital (MLH).