Centralized maintenance responsibilities: a case study.

This paper reviews a total equipment management program that has been documented since 1983. One department was given responsibility for all maintenance activities needed for the hospital's electronic equipment, including many items that were, at the time, not maintained by most biomedical engineering departments. The department combined customer satisfaction and cost-effectiveness into a single goal and produced excellent results. Costs decreased, customers were satisfied, and effectiveness increased. The program has saved over $1,000/bed/year for the last seven years, and total documented savings are over $5,000,000. The cost/unit was almost 30% below the average values for many other biomedical engineering departments.