Updated HTM Levels Guide Adds Online Assessment Tool

For immediate release/republishing

AAMI’s new-and-improved HTM Levels guide is now available with an online assessment tool, enabling healthcare technology management (HTM) departments to measure themselves against a national benchmark of excellence.

Now in its third edition, the HTM Levels Guide is an assessment designed to identify performance improvement opportunities for a HTM department and the services it provides. The updated guide features a 39-question online assessment divided into 11 categories to help department managers identify opportunities for improvement, both within each category and overall. The assessment is free for AAMI members and takes an estimated 15 to 20 minutes to complete.

“Managing and maintaining the vast assortment of health technology used every day is critical work for keeping healthcare delivery organizations running, and yet it’s very difficult to determine if a department is operating at peak performance,” said Danielle McGeary, vice president of HTM at AAMI. “Introducing the HTM Levels Guide with an online assessment has made benchmarking an HTM Department’s performance more accessible than ever before. By taking the online assessment, HTM departments can receive a score instantaneously, enabling them to easily identify opportunities for improvement.”

The online assessment is designed to accompany the third edition of AAMI’s HTM Levels Guide, sponsored by PartsSource. After completing the online assessment and receiving their score, an HTM department will be able to reference the printed HTM Levels Guide for a list of additional resources and guidance.

The latest HTM Levels Guide includes substantial developments over previous editions. It includes five classification levels representing a department’s progress towards becoming a leader in their field. The assessment also touches on new, increasingly important subject categories including information technology/medical device integration and cybersecurity.

Launched by AAMI’s Technology Management Council (TMC) in 2013, the HTM Levels Guide was developed by a commissioned team of HTM thought leaders and subject-matter experts, including Matt Baretich of Baretich Engineering; Frank Painter, a now-retired instructor from the University of Connecticut; and Ted Cohen, formerly of UC Davis Health.

“This Guide has opened up people to what they could be doing, what might be good ideas to put on their performance improvement planning,” Baretich said upon the document’s initial success. “We see a lot of places using it for a conversation program in their agency or program: ‘Have we accomplished these items? Where can we move ahead?’ It’s a food for thought item for discussion for people to think about where we can do better.”