Development of Testing Metrics for a Decision Model for the Replacement of Medical Equipment at a Large County Health System

Abstract

The medical revolution that has occurred in the last one-hundred years has truly been remarkable. With this amazing growth as well as the continued development come many aches and pains that are exhibited in any rapidly developing technology sector. A major concern is focused on the maintenance and replacement of these technologies. When is the right time to continue to hold onto existing technologies and products and when is it right to cut your losses and invest in new devices? This is a question that plagues hospitals and clinics worldwide. And it can be a costly question to answer.

This thesis seeks to formulate and test several metrics to indicate the proper points of replacement for a large fleet of medical equipment. There have been several publications attempting to quantify this risk, but most apply a complicated series of scoring criteria at a single timepoint and provide a recommendation to move forward. This thesis will pull in historical work order and cost data from the computerized maintenance monitoring system of Harris Health to test each designed metric and apply it to nearly 20 years of operations. The goal is to identify proper points of replacement and gauge performance of each metric. The metrics sought are simple and easily calculable with existing data from the CMMS.

The thesis will then make a recommendation of the metric that performed the best and review the past budgets of Harris Health to determine feasibility.