Sponsored by Innovatus Imaging
By Matt Tomory, Vice President of Sales and Marketing
As our worlds settle back down from a year of unpredictable chaos, it’s time to get back to proactive management versus crisis management on a daily basis. A key fundamental of proactive management is putting in place a life cycle plan for each device you support. Life cycle plans are like a road map to reach optimum lifetime value, assuring a positive ROI for the valuable investment your facilities make in imaging devices. How you repair and maintain your devices is a critical component of a life cycle plan.
Having been in this business for more than 30 years, I’ve seen a lot of different approaches to maintaining medical devices. What stands out the most, year after year, is the high price of low cost in this industry. Many times, providers choose to cut out steps in the repair process or use parts, materials and components that have not been verified to deliver the form, fit and function intended by the device manufacturer. To the layperson, or those unfamiliar with technical details, these might not seem necessary. All parts may appear equal, however, this has and never will be the case in an industry where precision and accuracy are so critical.
Elements of successful repair processes I have noticed to be effective over time follow. I’d welcome learning what you have discovered that works for you.
Here’s a brief summary of what I’ve experienced over the years:
- Warranties: Warranties can substantially lower the total cost of ownership, but only if they last longer than the repairs and claims made against them. Most companies warrant repairs for only 90 days yet even a poor-quality repair can last longer than that. Given the cost of repairs by today’s providers, you should expect 6- to-12-month warranties. Anything less could be a vote of no confidence by the suppliers themselves in their own repairs. Additionally, you should not be paying to repair the same device twice or more in a short-term period, if at all. It’s not good inventory management and can substantially derail ROIs and capital planning.
- Data-Driven Repair Services: It’s one thing to know how to fix a leaky faucet. It’s another to have an in-depth understanding backed by verifiable data over decades of research to understand precisely what caused the faucet to leak, and how you can recognize early warning signs that your faucet could start leaking. While this may be a simplistic example, it represents a critical fundamental for imaging device repair which is: Sustainable repair processes are built upon testing and research data that validates the procedures executed will result in the performance intended by the OEM and are sustainable for a reasonable amount of time. Repairs that are done to assure no water is still dripping from the faucet often warrant repeat repairs as the root of the issue was not identified and fixed initially. You get it.
- Parts: Many in the HTM industry realize that OEMs do not provide schematics, bills-of-materials or replacement parts for devices such as ultrasound probes and MRI coils. It should go without saying that all replacement parts are not equal and not every provider qualifies their replacement parts. For instance, for some it’s common practice to harvest broken products for valued components, assumed good. In other cases, some components are unable to be harvested and alternative solutions must be used. Yet doing so without controls in place potentially sets the device up for increased risk, latent failures, subsequent repairs and additional downtime. A key question to ask any repair provider is how replacement parts are sourced.
In short, as we move forward into a new era for health care and imaging services, we need to think about long-term asset management of each investment we make. Doing so is a carefully concerted strategy. Without one, it’s easy and sometimes essential to make decisions on the fly, based upon availability, and when that happens, our ability to manage inventory and maintenance costs efficiently and to avoid the pitfalls of the high cost of low price is often compromised.
Matt Tomory is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Innovatus Imaging. Contact him directly at matt.tomory@innovatusimaging.com for more information.
