Masterplan manages clinical technology systems for healthcare providers in more than 32 states.

Premier Business Partners:

Genesis

Separating medical systems and IT functions is becoming more difficult in healthcare as more providers merge the two. So when it comes to getting the technical support for both, it not only takes technical prowess, but also strong customer service skills. Chatsworth, Calif.-based Masterplan Inc. delivers clinical engineering services in an easy-to-understand format to healthcare providers in more than 32 states.

As healthcare needs become more advanced, providers are investing in new technology to keep pace. The 2007 report Technology Spending Trends: Strategies for the Healthcare Executive, sponsored by the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) and GE Healthcare Financial Services, reveals that investments in technology will influence a provider’s long-term competitive position. According to the report, many healthcare facilities allocate as much as 20 to 30 percent of capital spending to IT.

But, because providers cannot depend on the government or public funding for acquiring or supporting new technology, hospitals must, first, maintain their investments and second, find a price-competitive service provider they can rely on when a system needs an upgrade or maintenance. Masterplan CEO David Winn says the company can provide both.

Founded in 1974, Masterplan provides services to integrated health systems, hospitals, acute care facilities, medical groups, freestanding surgical and diagnostic centers and other alternate site healthcare providers. Today, roughly 95 percent of Masterplan’s revenues are generated by hospitals while imaging centers generate the remaining 5 percent, Winn notes.

“What our clients expect from us is a partnership that helps them address the principle problems that hospitals face – especially cost pressures,” Winn maintains. “We try to do one thing really well: manage and maintain medical equipment.”

New Directions
Where some competitors also sell their own equipment, or bundle food and laundry along with clinical services, Masterplan’s sole focus is to provide a complete vendor-neutral and cost-effective service for a wide range of sophisticated equipment technologies.

“Hospitals have thousands of medical devices, with many different vendors. We collect all of that information, simplify its administration, and often negotiate better prices with subcontracting vendors,” Winn notes. “We understand medical equipment inventory.

“We do all the preventive maintenance, call upon our skilled engineers to repair the devices, or coordinate with the OEMs for help when necessary.

“Because we are focused on one thing, we can afford to invest in the technology,  the skills, and the years of data we have collected across many hospitals and equipment vendors,” he continues. “We have no other agenda, and I think our single-minded focus makes us very competitive.”

Although Winn admits it’s hard to quantify market share, he says that as a small company, Masterplan can provide low-cost but high-quality services to its clients.

“I’ve emphasized that we invest in customer service and the training of our engineers to be superior not only technologically, but also in terms of how we work with our customers,” Winn notes. “Too often in our industry, people are better at talking to machines than to people.”

Other substantial goals are to expand Masterplan’s remote diagnostic capabilities across a range of imaging equipment, and to better harness the technology of its databases. Winn says a lot of its investments are aimed at helping “hospitals with their asset planning and to extend the life of the equipment that they already have. We have recently begun an initiative with reliability-centered maintenance, which goes to the root cause as to why devices fail and allows hospitals, for example, to do more effective preventive maintenance.”

According to Nick Shauer, vice president of human resources, Masterplan hired a director of talent development and a director of talent acquisition and retention to help employees develop specific talents, cross-train employees to help them grow in the company and recruit well-qualified people. “We view ourselves as a service firm, so the company has decided to put resources towards the problems with the work force,” Shauer explains.

Those problems, Shauer says, are an aging work force, fewer people entering the industry with the appropriate skill set and increasingly complex healthcare technologies.

“With our industry, many OEMs and other independent service providers spend a lot of time recruiting people away from their competitors,” Shauer explains. “That’s something that we do to some extent, but it’s not healthy to use that as the only strategy to develop the company. We are focused more on bringing in entry-level talent from the technical schools and the military and training them.”

Internships, in-house training and job-shadowing help new employees get assimilated with the scope of work. A 600-person team of field engineers with presence in 32 states helps Masterplan reach its varied customer base.

Masterplan provides extensive hands-on training at sister company ReMedPar’s facilities. “Because they have this 110,000-square-foot facility, we can bring in our field engineers and train them,” Winn says.

The Goodlettsville, Tenn., facility features more than 50 service bays and laboratories where engineers learn about and test new equipment and systems. It also utilizes classroom training modules and external training from OEMs.

‘Leaner and Meaner’
Masterplan’s R&D efforts differ from a formal program. The company works closely with its field engineers to better understand and then develop what clients need. “I’m a big believer that wisdom doesn’t rain down from the pinnacle – it sprouts up from below,” Winn asserts. “Ours is a culture which makes it easy for people to cultivate ideas.”

Backed by private equity, Winn maintains that the company is about more than the almighty dollar. “We are in the healthcare business,” he states. “This is not just about money; we are trying to help doctors save lives. We’re not a global, multinational company, so we don’t carry a lot of overhead, and to stand up to the bigger brands out there we have to be leaner and meaner. But the fact is that we have been growing and hospitals out there do trust us.”