In today’s episode, Keri Stephens and the @BeardedBiomed dive into HTM’s supply chain challenges in medical device maintenance and procurement and how they’re affecting the HTM industry.  Hear real stories on how hospitals are managing, the tough decisions they are facing, and how this problem can be combatted to an extent. If you enjoy the episode, please don’t forget to like, subscribe, and follow!

Podcast Transcript

Keri Stephens:
Hi, welcome back to the 24×7 version of the MEDQOR Podcast Network. I am here with my wonderful co-host, the Bearded Biomed. And it’s been a while since we’ve just sat down and talked and today we’re going to talk about supply chain challenges in medical devices and kind of how they’re affecting the HTM industry. So Chase, tell me what you’ve seen regarding supply chain issues.

Bearded Biomed:
So I think everybody’s kind of feeling the burden of supply chain issues right now, as it is. Obviously we’ve been on the stint of COVID, which has obviously impacted that. I think everybody, when they think of supply chain, they just automatically go to all right, well, a part or a accessory or something for my medical device, or for patient care has been on back order, but I think it goes a lot deeper than that.

Bearded Biomed:
There’s also a massive staffing shortage right now, which is also playing towards the supply chain issues. If you want to consider that we have a nursing shortage, we have a truck driver shortage. All of these integral pieces play a huge impact in delivering everything we need to deliver patient care. There was that huge shipwreck that caused massive backlog of parts. Now specifically, I’ve had a couple instances in the past several months, that have really kind of slowed everything down for my customers and have made it unfortunately, a little difficult in getting repairs up in time. One such is, I actually finally got it completed yesterday. I had a blanket warmer, which is used for making the towels nice and cozy for patients. Their fan motor kit went down and I ordered this piece at the beginning of January and I just got it yesterday.

Bearded Biomed:
Now I had reached out to Steris, which they were absolutely fantastic on. They kept me up to date with statuses all throughout the entire several months I was contacting them. But they had actually told me, that they had parts on back order since October and November of last year, and this was all due to supply chain.

Bearded Biomed:
Now, luckily this is not a critical life saving device, but I mean, we’ve also experienced within my company, we actually had a CT tube that wasn’t available for two weeks. And anybody that’s relevantly knows about CTs is the longer they are down, the longer it’s costing the facility money. Because it’s not just about it being down, it costs money to provide electrical, HVAC, everything for this unit. And then you’re also having to turn away patients for providing care for that as well. So these supply chain issues, while minute, can also jump to an extreme position such as for the CT as well.

Keri Stephens:
Yeah. And I read your article recently about how there’s an AED shortage due to microchips, the lack of microchips. You think about that. AEDs are used to save people’s lives and they’re in public places, but without AEDs, if someone has a heart attack, what are they going to do? It’s so much bigger than what it seems, I think.

Bearded Biomed:
Yeah. The microchip industry, especially right now. I’m kind of a techy guy, so I like to build computers and do that kind of thing. And a lot of the graphics cards and things of that nature, were really hard to get and come by simply due to microchip shortages and things of that nature. And that is obviously extended into the medical realm too. Going into the AED story, I actually had another customer, it was about a week or so ago. And I came in and I did the preventive maintenance inspections and I came across an AED. And of course, one of the major things you want to check AEDs are that obviously it passes a cell test, meaning the batteries are up and good. And of course the pads, the pads were not only expired, they were egregiously expired.

Bearded Biomed:
And I had asked him, “Hey, do you have backup pads with your places because I cannot in good conscious, let you have these hooked up to the unit.” And she said, “No, I’ve had these pads on back order for the past six months. And my only way to have a functioning AED is to have these expired pads onto this unit,” which is a huge red flag. But we are at that extreme right now where they either have to choose expired pads or have no life saving device at all. That’s…

Keri Stephens:
That’s terrifying. It really is. And people, again, don’t, I think the general public has no idea about the ramifications of these shortages and really how they could result in a life or death situation.

Bearded Biomed:
That’s what we’re for, right Keri?

Keri Stephens:
Right. We’re telling you, so you heard it first here. But what do you think it’s going to take to improve this? Do you think that will be improvements on the horizon or do you think it’s going to get worse before it gets better?

Bearded Biomed:
I think we’re probably at that worst threshold, but then again, you never know. It kind of threw us all for loop to begin with and it kind of had us reassess and really inform customers and medical facilities that, “Hey, lead times are probably going to be a lot longer than you’re used to. And not simply just because we’re unable to do the repair, but we have sometimes, no really discernible amount of time that the manufacturers give us in which we’re going to get these parts to service your equipment.” And it’s not just parts. I’ve spoken with several materials managers. They can’t get certain accessories for doing particular surgery cases. They can’t get simple accessories like a SBO2 finger pulse or something along those lines from their distributor to get equipment back up and running because a lot of these things that get beat the hell and from time to time, they need to be replaced.

Bearded Biomed:
One thing I would encourage a lot of medical facilities is, usually a medical facility will be tied down to whatever distributor or vendor they like to use. Most of the time I’ll hear like Henry Shine or what’s the other one, I’m drawing a blank right now, but it’s massive, and they order a lot from them. But, if you are encased by back orders and lead time from your vendors, it might be worth at least for the time being, going out of that scope. And I understand some people have contracts in place, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t reach out and see what else is in the ecosystem to see if we can get your equipment up and running as well.

Bearded Biomed:
It’s going to take a lot more networking and a lot more research than what we’re typically used to. But at the end of the day, we don’t want this to inhibit patient safety and especially patient care in general. So if we have to make that extra sacrifice to go outside our normal realm of where we’re ordering parts, accessories, and things of that nature, then obviously it needs to be done, at least until we get out of this weird box that we’re in, with supply chain.

Keri Stephens:
Do you think that this is directly attributable to COVID and just coming off of COVID and obviously COVID hasn’t gone away, but maybe the main pandemic has, but do you think this is still tied to that, and that’s the reason for these shortages or not?

Bearded Biomed:
I think a lot of experts have kind of pointed to COVID, the pandemic as the main cause of the supply chain disruption, which it’s really only increased the shortage of material. This isn’t even just for parts and accessories. This also goes for even new equipment coming out. There’s a lot that goes into it. It’s not just, we can’t get stuff to service what we have now. Manufacturers are struggling to meet the demands for getting out their newer products as well, just because they don’t have the materials available.

Bearded Biomed:
And those disruptions, really, we’re kind of at an unprecedented level of having medical supplies and equipment and everything else readily available for facilities. I think in short, COVID has kind of been the lighting spark to all this. And if you compile that with staffing shortages, of course, like I said, the actual chain of supply from freight and shipping and things of that nature, where there’s just been, there’s story after story of interruption, ships crashing into canals or you see the videos and pictures of shipping containers just falling off of the freight loader. There’s just a lot of different factors, but I think COVID, like I said, was the beginning spark to all of this.

Keri Stephens:
Yeah, I agree. That’s what we started hearing about the shortages, but obviously it’s gotten so much worse. One of my friends owns a trucking company and all I hear about is, there’s also the labor shortage, available driver shortage and just, it’s such a vicious cycle. And I think, that also leads into the industry, HTM as a whole. People are exiting the field. So not only do you have a part shortage, you have a future labor shortage too, it seems like a perfect storm to me.

Bearded Biomed:
Yeah. As we have all known, you may have both spoken about it is, the biomed field in general, always had issues with retention. But more so it’s been a continuous thing that we don’t have the bodies coming into the field to meet that labor shortage. I’ve heard talk of, “Well, that’s 10, 15 years down the line.” No, this is an issue now, which is why so many people are bringing it up year, after year, after year at conferences, on my podcast, news articles, biomed society meetings. I’ve heard it almost at every single iteration.

Bearded Biomed:
And like I said, we have discussed this almost ad nauseam to a point. But the reason we are is because this is going to dramatically affect the landscape of the medical industry, if we do not have people that are qualified and meeting the need to properly service these medical devices. And that’s, like I said, the supply chain issue, eventually that will be resolved. Right now, it’s just tough. But a larger issue is labor shortages and staffing and meeting the demands that we need to meet, in order to facilitate the care that we have been doing for however long we’ve been doing this for.

Keri Stephens:
Yeah. I know, and on this podcast, Danielle and I talk just about all this stuff Amy’s doing to mitigate the supply chain shortage. And I think, it’s so nice to see so many movements to change it, but yeah, it is. Every biomed show I’ve been to, that’s such a main topic. Beyond cyber security, it seems like retention and bringing new blood to the field is the biggest thing. So it’s going to be interesting to see kind of how this unfolds and I do hope that all the different efforts work.

Bearded Biomed:
Well, Danielle and her team are doing a great job at AME to give us the tools within the field to obviously do reach out and get people interested in the field. But, they can only do so much. They’ve set up the apprenticeship program. They’ve created avenues for… They’re thinking the middle to long term solution and what we need to do as biomeds currently within the field, and senior leaders within the HTM industry, is take those tools and apply them. So the HTM In A Box, is a wonderful tool. It encompasses all different age ranges, even new career changes. But if the biomeds within the field are not taking that HTM In A Box tool and applying it to their local high school or career day, or what have you, it’s not being utilized and we’re not doing that outreach. Obviously we have full time jobs, especially with labor shortages, making us have to work a little bit longer. But, that’s going to be a major contributor that I don’t think a lot of people are either willing to invest their time in or cognizant of, being able to do so.

Bearded Biomed:
I myself have not had the opportunity to speak to many new grads or new kids. Obviously, that’s why I’m trying to do it through the podcasts. But I have stopped at a couple colleges and spoken to new biomed hopefuls. I would encourage everyone within the field to scout out maybe a school within your area, take the HTM In a Box and just get out there and volunteer for a day and let people know why this field is so rewarding and so important. I do have plans on doing that this summer as well, because at the end of the day, 10 to 15 years from now when our senior leaders have left and we don’t have the means to fill those positions, part of the blame is going to lie within the HTM field itself.

Keri Stephens:
I fully agree. You can’t complain about the problem if you’re not doing anything and yeah, I want to, again, just applaud Danielle and the team at AME for what they’re doing. It’s pretty ingenious, in my opinion. It’s a really, really innovative way to get new blood to the field and Chase, I encourage everyone to really take those tools and run with them because, like you said, tools are only as good as what you use them for. So it does, it takes an effort of everyone in the field to just rally behind this and encourage people and tell them why you love to do what you do. Because if they don’t know about the field, they can’t go into it. And I think that’s been one of HTM’s, in my opinion, biggest issue is a lack of just awareness of the profession as a whole.

Bearded Biomed:
I recently, when I went on a venture to obviously speak at a conference, I had a gentleman walk up to me and he said, “Hey, I listen to your podcast. I just wanted to meet you. I’m currently in biomed school right now.” I believe he said College Bond Medical Equipment Technology, which is based in San Antonio, Marty has that program and it’s fantastic. I hope to get down there and look at it. But anyway, he approached me and he said, “I’ve been a contractor all my life. I’m over 40 now and it’s just not doing it for me right now. And I decided to make a career shift, by listening to your podcast. And not only that, my son who is currently in high school, who stays with his mother and I don’t get to see him as much as I would like to, we have bonded listening to your podcast and he is also deciding to get into the biomed field.”

Bearded Biomed:
Now this took me aback just because that’s the whole mission of the podcast for me, to outreach, to get people interested, to fill these labor supply chain issues and get people interested and aware of the field. And not only did I capture the interest of someone willing to change their career, which is really hard, especially in that timeframe as an adult, but also get his son interested. That was probably the most rewarding thing that I could have gotten out of everything I’ve done. And like I said, it’s honestly inspired me to do more outreach to, like I said, go and try to figure out what local chapters there might be or speak to more kids at colleges and high schools and elementary schools.

Bearded Biomed:
It’s possible people, but at the end of the day, you have to make the discerning decision that you’re going to invest a little bit of time to help meet these shortages. So that’s if anything, from this episode, obviously we have supply chain issues and it’s nothing one person can fix with supply chain. It’s the brunt of the beast right now. There’s certain ways we can navigate it by networking with either other hospitals, other vendors and trying to get the supplies you need and just holding for them until we get through this, and it will eventually pass. But as for labor shortages and meeting the needs within the HTM industry, give a little bit of yourself back to investing in the future for our field, and we’ll be much better off within the coming decade.

Keri Stephens:
Well, I can’t think of a better way to wrap that up. Chase as always, it was so great to talk to you and I look forward to having more conversations in this podcast and as always, please subscribe to 24/7 at www.24x7mag.com. So thank you so much, bye.

Bearded Biomed:
It’s been an absolute pleasure.