Although many departments have brought a lot of service in-house, many still use service contracts in some way. The Service Solutions section of the February issue of 24×7 focuses on making wise choices when negotiating service contracts. Joe Medina, AAS, biomed department supervisor at Exempla Good Samaritan Medical Center, Lafayette, Colo, offers some good advice when considering the coverage you need. To customize coverage down to each piece of equipment, Medina reviews and discusses usage and coverage needs with the user groups. “If we have one CT, we may want 24/7 coverage, but with two, they may not need the same coverage if they perform differently,” he says. “That’s when you involve the user groups, asking which is used most and which provides the better images, and maybe that one gets greater coverage in the contract than the other.” This saves on pricing without negligibly risking uptime security.
How do you plan your coverage? What have you discovered works best to get the coverage you need? Share your best practices here, and be sure to read the upcoming article, Essentially Smart Contracts, for more tips.
