Joint medical maintenance team saves lives

  • Published
  • By Luke Waack
  • JBER PAO
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska --  Housed in the basement of the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson DoD/VA Joint Venture Hospital, the Medical Equipment Repair Center services a $36 million inventory of lifesaving medical equipment.

Air Force Master Sgt. Margaret Cooper heads a team of 11 highly trained biomedical equipment technicians who serve as the hub for medical equipment repair and maintenance for Alaska's military medical treatment facilities and clinics.
The team serves more than 115,000 people, according to Cooper, and maintaining medical equipment which literally gives life saving support to patients is important to her and her team.

"I have always been trained and take it personally and think of this piece of medical equipment being attached to one of my family members," Cooper said. "That always comes to my mind when I'm checking out a piece of equipment - it keeps my integrity in check."

BMETs face many challenges in their day to day mission, whether here on base or deployed in a combat zone.

"Some of the equipment we service we do have concerns about infection control issues, we have to consider hazardous material that may be inside the equipment or used with the equipment - radiation with the X-ray," Cooper said.

Despite the hard work required, Cooper's team performs well, proven last year when they along with their Medical Logistics counterparts were named the 673d Medical Group "Flight of the Year."

There is no shortage of work for Cooper and her team, here in Alaska.

"We inspect any and all kinds of medical equipment before it goes out to the facility (Joint Hospital) or out to other facilities on the base and used for patient care," Cooper said.
And there's also no shortage of types of equipment.

Automated External Defibrillators are maintained and issued by the team.

"The AEDs are the defibrillators that are used, whether at the gym or at the commissary in case there are any cardiac arrests," said Air Force Staff Sgt. Christine Collins, BMET.

"In this hospital, we take care of everything from blood pressure pumps up to the MRI systems. It's a whole gamut of equipment," said Tech. Sgt. Raymond Hillis, noncommissioned officer in charge of Medical Equipment.

And all the equipment needs to be calibrated, at least annually if not more often. It's very important that accuracy is maintained, especially when administering medications and life saving fluids, which makes calibration trips to outlying Coast Guard, Air Force and Army medical clinics a requirement.

"Our shop is a medical equipment repair center which means we have more specialized test equipment and training for the BMETs we have here than the smaller units so we can go out on the road and maintain those smaller units on an annual basis," Hillis said.

The DoD technical school training for a BMET is 11 months long and is currently held at the Joint Services Medical Education and Training Center, at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

"We have to be trained mechanically, electronically, power production type electrical, we have to know hydraulics, pneumatics, laser systems, imaging systems in X-ray, so it's a wide scope," Hillis said. "We have people that specify, get really good in certain areas, so they'll be our leads in those areas. Then we'll have people that are good in general in all the different sections."

The MERC also supports Army Troop Medical Clinics.

"If I need help with medical diagnostic test equipment, they're more than willing to help out," said Army Sgt. Charles Minnig, Medical Department Activity-Alaska maintenance technician. "Right now, I'm returning a thermometer tester that I used to test my equipment."

In some ways, BMETs are just like auto mechanics or aircraft maintainers, Hillis said, they just work with different equipment.

"Personally, I love turning wrenches on things," Hillis said. "I love playing with new technology, and with medical equipment you have the latest greatest technology."

"Everything in the medical scene is the cutting edge. Some of our oldest technology we see might be five to seven years old," Hillis said. "You compare that to maintainers of aircraft on the base - that's 50s, 60s, 70s technology they are working on - we're working on the cutting edge of everything."

Next year, the techs will see an additional $3.1 million of equipment at the hospital.
Technicians like Senior Airman Charles Heady, BMET, rely on their training, equipment manuals and manufacturer customer service to get the job done right.

"If we find a problem in something we have the literature to go to and it normally helps us out with a lot of things. It will also tell us the phone number to the company to call them to get even more precise," Heady said.

If a piece of equipment has propriety systems or a repair need that exceeds the team's capabilities, it is returned to the manufacturer.

The medical equipment technicians also deploy to perform their duties downrange.
On average, they spend six months deployed and 18 months back.

In a deployed hospital compound, biomedical equipment technicians maintain tents, generators for medical facilities, heating ventilation and cooling, oxygen production systems, even making furniture and laying concrete are, at times, a necessity.

Whether at home station or deployed, BMETs perform life saving work, quietly behind the scenes.