BHN Healthcare Blog

Urodynamic testing has the potential to provide health care professionals with much more detailed information on the health of their patient’s bladders, urethras, and their body’s ability to store and flush urine. Urodynamics, especially when used in rural health clinics, allows health care professionals to more accurately diagnose causes of urinary incontinence and other issues relating to the bladder and lower urinary system, making it a key service that needs to be integrated into RHC practices.

What Is Urodynamics?

Urodynamics along with urodynamic testing, in its simplest form, is the assessment of how the bladder, urethra, and associated sphincters do their job for storing and releasing urine from the body.

2020 and 2021 have shown that urodynamics continues to grow and find unique and novel applications for diagnosing health issues relating to the bladder, urethra, and more. Here we have outlined 4 of the most interesting studies of the past year in the world of urodynamics:

On January 20th of this year, Joe Biden was sworn in as the United States of America’s 46th president. Like any new leader of a country, this change in the White House meant many different things for various people, businesses, and entire industries.

The new administration is a tremendous shift from the previous one, changing the nation’s landscape across the board.

No more are these changes evident than in healthcare. Biden and his administration’s approach - even at first glance - is a totally different beast than former President Trump’s. With that said, how will this impact private practices across the US?

This blog will explore the above question and then delve into urology practices, specifically.

Providing an effective field service is one of the key responsibilities of medical device companies.

Traditionally, field service agents have been technical support staff with little to no background in medical sciences. Today, however, there is an increasing trend toward incorporating nursing staff, particularly nurse educators, in medical device field service.

Any industry thrives on customer satisfaction, and this applies equally to medical device companies. For medical device companies, customers are typically healthcare professionals who are fully satisfied only when they are able to use a device correctly and to its maximum efficacy, and can summon support to troubleshoot problems as soon as they crop up. Hence, the need for a reliable and readily available field service that can handle problems related to medical devices quickly.

What is expected from a traditional field service?

Field service is required after the sale of medical devices and field staff from the medical device company visit customer premises—usually a hospital or clinic—for this purpose. The general expectations from a field service are:

There has been a recent trend on the part of both pharmaceutical and medical device companies to employ nurses and then deploy them in the field in different roles to support their products—the products being drugs and devices, respectively. Given the clinical background and medical knowledge of nurses, this has been a win-win situation for everyone, including the end users of the products, such as patients and healthcare teams and professionals. For medical device companies that have overlooked the trend, it’s something that needs to be given some serious thought since nurse educator services can have a meaningful and lasting impact on medical device utilization rates.

If you ended up on this blog post, you are probably thinking about buying urodynamic equipment or are evaluating purchasing options. If you are, I am going to lay out an argument for not buying it.  As with purchasing any medical equipment, there are many hidden pitfalls. I want to lay out some of these pitfalls and detail an alternative to buying urodynamics equipment.

Providing top-notch medical device field service can sometimes feel like a logistical nightmare. The problems can seem too large to tackle, leaving you and your team in the proverbial “analysis paralysis”.

We've compiled a comprehensive list to assist you in improving your current service level and keep your customer satisfaction score at an all-time high:

The effective provision of medical device field service is not a simple process to optimize. There are many factors that influence operations, from resources and technology to staff management and coordination. Field service organizations that keep track of all of these different factors manage to provide a seamless and efficient service and keep their customers satisfied.

But no business is perfect from the get-go. In most cases, a period of trial and error is unavoidable while getting a grasp of the intricacies of running and managing field service operations, especially when it comes to medical devices. Being aware of the most common mistakes made in the delivery of field service support can significantly shorten the learning curve.

With that in mind, here are some of the most common errors that medical device field service organizations commit while providing and managing their service:

Field service management is a vital part of any organization's business strategy. No business can enjoy continued success without providing high-quality field service, while a remarkably good field service raises customer satisfaction and brand reputation. Offering a great field service not only removes the risk of tarnishing the brand image that goes along with a poor service, but it also increases customer loyalty and revenue as a consequence.

Background

A Medical Device: Field Service - Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a contractual agreement between a field service provider (“Service Provider”) and a Customer (typically a medical device company) that contains the terms and conditions that govern how the Service Provider will perform field service tasks for the Customer; how the parties will communicate with one another; how the parties will modify the agreement over time to fit their ongoing business relationship; how the Customer will pay the Service Provider; and all other details governing the relationship between the parties.