Clinical Equipment Life Cycle

We begin a new 3-part series on the clinical equipment life cycle and how Crothall Clinical Equipment Services partners with our client hospitals every step of the way.

As the chart below illustrates, there are three main stages of the equipment life cycle: Planning & Acquisition, Use/Maintain/Manage, and Disposition. Every decision related to clinical equipment is part of this continuum, and the goal is to lengthen this life cycle so that a hospital gets the most value out of every piece of equipment. A hospital can save a significant amount of money and reduce problems and downtime by having an expert partner to guide it through every phase of the life cycle.

It Starts with a Plan

Capital dollars are never easy to come by at most hospitals. It is vitally important to develop a thorough capital acquisition plan for the thousands of devices residing in a hospital facility to ensure the best capital decisions are made. There are three main reasons for making an acquisition:

• Clinical need for more advanced technology
• Replacement of old devices past usable life and out of warranty
• Upgrade equipment that is not meeting quality standards

Experience and Technology

It requires experience to know what options are available in the field and what has worked best in other facilities. Ultimately, the decision must come down to what solution is the best fit for a particular hospital.

Crothall’s clients are connected via a network of experts who not only are knowledgeable about competing technologies, but may actually be managing these devices in other facilities and can attest to their performance.

Crothall’s TeamTRACE software is a database containing every device Crothall maintains throughout the country. Users can run reports to identify repetitive failures and other potential problems for equipment being considered for purchase. As a vendor-neutral support option, Crothall can recommend the best choice for clients, free from any allegiance to a single manufacturer.

Proposal Evaluation

At University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler, 15-year-old ICU beds needed replacement. Nurses desired a bed model with several upgrades and added features. To save money, the hospital was considering purchasing only 3 fully-equipped beds out of the 10 beds it needed. Even this solution would cost a proposed $300,000. Instead, Crothall worked with the vendor to purchase all 10 beds as evaluation units (with full warranty), equipped with all the features, which only cost $250,000. In addition, the patient safety-related features of the beds (turn-assist, zoom-assist) triggered additional savings by qualifying the hospital for special state funding.

Crothall can also help evaluate equipment proposals. For example, at Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago, after upgrading the central monitoring system to a new telemetry system, Crothall reviewed the contract and discovered that the vendor was charging for all new licenses, when in fact the existing licenses were portable to the new system. This simple step saved the hospital almost $20,000 instantly.

Often, vendors push for a “point of sale contract,” in which service is tied in at the time the device is purchased. Crothall will help avoid service contracts whenever equipment can be covered in-house. When service contracts are necessary, Crothall will compare the proposal to the price other facilities are paying for the same service to make sure it is fair and reasonable.

Special Requirements

Why is it important to have a reliable partner helping with the planning and acquisition of clinical equipment? It is critical to determine special requirements equipment may demand, such as voltage, ventilation, and frequency for telemetry equipment. Crothall CES Technical Solutions Director Jan Jones relates an experience: “A hospital ordered a new laser without consulting with the CE department. A doctor wanted it, so the hospital bought it. When it was delivered and the installer arrived, it was discovered that the laser needed an isolated 220-volt line in the OR suite, but it had never been installed. As a result, this $80,000 device sat for a year in a crate in the basement.”