Authors (including presenting author) :
Cham WM(1), Tong WC(1), Kwok CS(1), Lam TH(1), Chan KL(1)
Affiliation :
(1) Procurement and Materials Management Department, United Christian Hospital
Introduction :
The hospital services have been under tremendous pressure in recent years. In KEC, the bed occupancy rates of UCH and TKOH for inpatients especially Medical & Geriatric, have reached 120% during the winter surge period. The attendance rate of SOPC in KEC has also been staying at high levels with steady increase every year. Both increase in in-patient and out-patient service demands have led to an increasing need for more medical equipment to support the operations. While it may not be cost-effective and feasible for each ward and unit to make additional purchase of similar type of equipment (which may not be used at the same time) due to various considerations including resources implication, service rationalization and space limitation, KEC management has come up with an innovative idea to set up an equipment library serving as a central pool to provide equipment support including back up, inventory management, and maintenance service support to end users to cope with upsurge in demands and operational needs. To reduce the repair time and lead time in ordering spare parts for the corrective maintenance events, a spare parts inventory will also be established for KEC.
Objectives :
(1)To improve the equipment uptime and availability when no additional equipment was purchased by wards, (2) to shorten the repair time and equipment downtime, and (3) to save space in clinical wards
Methodology :
(1) A equipment and parts list with consideration of quantity, the past fault rate, the universality of equipment across departments and the demand of equipment in upsurge period was formed, with a reality check performed by asking feedbacks from frontline users for the drafted list.
(2) Resources planning in facility, budget availability for procurement of equipment, and manpower needed for the establishment and subsequent operation for the equipment library.
(3) A operational workflow with service pledge was built for counting no. of request from users, logistic arrangement, data capturing and the maintenance of equipment
Result & Outcome :
A space with 2000ft2 was leased for the equipment library store with 22 types of equipment and 44 types of common spare parts stored and they would be regularly reviewed for further improvement.
The utilization data of the equipment and spare parts would be captured and analyzed to evaluate its outcome in terms of equipment availability and reduction in downtime. A customer satisfaction survey would also be conducted to quantify the benefit in establishment of equipment library. As the service was just started with inadequate information, further evaluation would be done in 3 months’ time.
