Medical Device Company Tells Hospitals They're No Longer Allowed to Fix Machine That Costs Six Figures
Hospitals are increasingly being forced into maintenance contracts with device manufacturers, driving up costs.
The manufacturer of a machine that costs six figures used during heart surgery has told hospitals that it will no longer allow hospitals’ repair technicians to maintain or fix the devices and that all repairs must now be done by the manufacturer itself, according to a letter obtained by 404 Media. The change will require hospitals to enter into repair contracts with the manufacturer, which will ultimately drive up medical costs, a person familiar with the devices said.
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Nurse_Robot
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WordBox
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Onomatopoeia
in reply to Nurse_Robot • • •Even worse, the McD ice cream machine issue was caused my McD themselves, by having requirements around cleaning cycles that were tighter than the machine could do.
The same machines worked fine at other companies.
Eager Eagle
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •same rotten practices as John Deere and other manufactures, now disguised as "the risk to patient safety is too high."
you know what else is high risk? Not repairing machines because it's unaffordable.
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alexc
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NeoNachtwaechter
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •Illegal here.
Poor countries where this is still legally possible.
Read about John Deere.
Zorque
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •anubis119
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •4am
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •MangoPenguin
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •GreenKnight23
in reply to MangoPenguin • • •meyotch
in reply to MangoPenguin • • •That is far from ‘how it works’ with capital equipment of this cost. It’s like steering the titanic to change a major piece of diagnostic equipment. These types of devices are integrated into the health records databases, they require gas supply of various sorts, you might need to knock out a wall to remove it, which shuts down other critical lab functions.
All in all, in my experience installing lab automation, it took over two years from the moment the decision is made to buy a 6-7 figure system to getting the first real patient data from that system. It involves architects, contractors, medical and lab directors, training, hand holding, lawsuits.
So it’s a type of vendor lock-in far worse than anything else I have encountered.
AnarchistArtificer
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •Pluralistic: 10 Jul 2020 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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