A Comparative Study of Medical Equipment Maintenance Cost and Performance for Selected Saudi Hospitals
Saleh S. Altayyar
Saleh S. Altayyar, Department of Biomedical Technology, College of Applied Medical Scienses, King Saud University, Riyadh – Saudi Arabia.
Manuscript received on 13 April 2017 | Revised Manuscript received on 20 April 2017 | Manuscript Published on 30 April 2017 | PP: 226-231 | Volume-6 Issue-4, April 2017 | Retrieval Number: D4975046417/17©BEIESP
Open Access | Editorial and Publishing Policies | Cite | Mendeley | Indexing and Abstracting
© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: Healthcare technology administrators are always held responsible for the poor performance of the medical equipment maintenance team, delay in response to service requests, and long down time. Customer satisfaction are just part of the challenges they are facing. The objective of this study is to analyze and compare the cost of medical equipment maintenance, performance of medical equipment maintenance team in three major hospitals in Saudi Arabia (academic, military, and public). The annual cost of maintenance per medical equipment, work load per 1 FTE (technical employee), down time, turnaround time, cost of service ratio (COSR), hourly cost of maintenance, and acquisition cost per 1 FTE (technical employee) are used in the assessment and analytical comparison. When comparing the cost of service (COSR), turnaround time, and the down time in the three hospitals, it can be seen that the academic hospital has the lowest COSR (3.7%), the lowest down time (1.2 days) and the lowest turnaround time (1.5 days). The other two hospitals (military and public) have relatively higher COSR (6.7 and 5.8 %) respectively and high down time (29 and 10.7) days respectively. it is clear from this study that hospital that uses a combination of in house, Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), and independent service provider (third party) contract tend to have redundancy in technical staff which results in under worked technical staff and consequently unnecessary increased spending on maintenance, and poor maintenance performance, when measured by the annual cost of maintenance of medical equipment, down time, and turnaround time. This can be seen in the public hospital which has the highest cost of medical equipment maintenance among the three hospitals ($570).
Keywords: Acquisition Cost per Technician, Cost of Service (COSR), Medical Equipment Maintenance, Methods of Maintenance.
Scope of the Article: Software Maintenance and Evolution