IMV Cheers GE Cardiology Service, Proactive Monitoring

Main Category: Cardiovascular / Cardiology
Also Included In: MRI / PET / Ultrasound;  Radiology / Nuclear Medicine
Article Date: 01 Apr 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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GE Healthcare has taken many steps to bolster its service offerings and, as a result, currently stands as the top rated vendor in Overall OEM Service Performance for X-Ray Cardiology & Angiography service, according to IMV ServiceTrak, a leading independent third-party research firm. GE Cardiovascular Service was top ranked in 12 additional X-Ray Cardiology categories including OEM Service Follow-up, Timeliness of Arrival On-Site and shared the #1 ranking for Service Performance Related to Charge.

"We've really tried to listen to our customers, both in what delights them and what frustrates them," said Amy Lazarus, GE Healthcare's general manager of cardiovascular services. "By hearing their feedback, we've made changes to our service like bringing the call center back to the US and putting more proactive capabilities into our products. The IMV recognition is a signal to me that we are doing the right things and will continue to do so."

The ServiceTrak report is an independent analysis of service trends in the imaging industry. The X-Ray Cardiology survey was based on rankings of users representing 429 systems, while the X-Ray Angiography survey represented 472 systems across the US.

A significant piece of the GE service portfolio is the industry recognized Innova Promise, a commitment to remotely monitor each Innova system through an InSite Broadband connection to detect exam interruptions and potential failures. The program has been independently validated to respond to a problem before it occurs 25% of the time. "No other vendor can claim that," said Lazarus. "We're the only ones doing remote, proactive monitoring without an additional charge to our customers." The Innova Promise comes standard with every Innovaâ X-ray system under warranty or service contract. To date, GE has more than 2,000 systems being actively monitored.

"If everything is working right, ours is still a high-risk service," said Syd Rubencamp, Cardiology Director of St. Rose Dominican Hospitals in Las Vegas. "When a patient comes in with a full-blown heart attack, equipment failure is simply unacceptable."

Innova Promise allows GE Remote Engineers to detect primary items such as low fluid levels and temperature and humidity spikes. They can also detect more complex issues involving the mechanical and electrical functionality of the system, and even include an integrated UPS (uninterruptible power supplies) with each system to provide protection from power surges. GE's entire cardiovascular service team is equipped to receive automated alerts when there is an indication of a problem.

For example, Cary Lucian, field service engineer for GE Healthcare, once received a message on his cell phone regarding a potential issue detected at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla, the busiest cardiovascular center in San Diego County. From the diagnostic report alone, Lucian identified the cause and immediately ordered the replacement part to prepare for the maintenance call.

Cary took the initiative, knew what he had to do and had the replacement parts on site before we even knew there was a problem," Lisa Gonsalves, Database Administrator for Scripps Memorial remarked. "This proactive service decreases emergent downtime, which is critical to our clinicians."

Lazarus noted this level of reliability creates a "good problem" for the service team. "As we often fix the trouble behind the scenes, our biggest challenge is letting the healthcare providers or clinicians or hospitals know the value we added!" she laughed. "As long as they see the equipment as more reliable, we're doing . About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.

GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries.

GE Healthcare