Equipment Upkeep

The upkeep of equipment deals beyond breakdown maintenance of equipment

- Deepak Agarkhed

The repeated leakages of endoscopes and wrong reading from cell counter units are a few examples of delayed patient clinical service on account of medical equipment. Besides clinical, the impact is on financial revenues for high-end equipment like MRI.

The medical technology in hospital has been playing a vital role in patient diagnosis and fast recovery, over the past two decades. The decision of procuring technology is mainly done based on its projected utilisation rate and its criticality to services offered in the hospital. Considering that planned estimated patient load in hospital have the necessary infrastructure and manpower, the maximum uptime of equipment will play an important factor. The upkeep of medical equipment is necessary to ensure that patients are diagnosed or treated timely and discharged in a timely manner. The upkeep of equipment deals beyond breakdown maintenance of equipment.

A survey of user feedback and audit of clinical areas was conducted in one of the private hospitals to understand the major bottlenecks for keeping the high upkeep of equipment. The result of the study was an eye-opener to the maintenance team as well as to the user of equipment.

For any household appliance purchase, we get operator manual for user group to refer to and understand how to operate. This was missing in most areas and equipment users were not knowing several important features of the equipment.

Unclean equipment surrounding area particularly at the rear side.

Lack of awareness of adverse events related to medical technology when wrongly used both on the patient and the operator.

No proper inventory maintenance and planning by clinical engineering team.

Non maintenance of equipment history reports for critical decision making like spare part procurement and condemnation.