Preventive maintenance for Hospital Management.
Preventive maintenance is another popular concept in maintenance management. This form of maintenance is a planned maintenance program for the equipment resulting in periodic inspection and check-up. It has to be carried out routinely and before the need arises for repairs that would eventually interrupt the system service and could also prove expensive. Most of the times, preventive maintenance can be carried out by the user independent of the engineer.
Breakdown maintenance takes place whenever equipment breaks down. It is very essential to go through the PM records to understand the overall performance of the equipment till the time of the breakdown. Merely setting the equipment right alone is not important, but tracking down the cause of the breakdown is equally important as precautions could be taken to prevent the fault from recurring. Just as doctors recommend annual health check-ups for individuals past a certain age, equipment too require such check-ups to obviate unexpected failures which could prove detrimental to patient care, the functioning of the concerned department and would be expensive. Such predictive maintenance detects trouble indicators in equipment, revealing any unexpected deterioration taking place. Following this procedure would definitely reduce the probability of breakdowns and extend the life of the equipment.
Just as every patient visiting a hospital has a file detailing his case history, so also equipment requires that a record be maintained from the time it comes to the hospital. First of all these records would cover the details of the manufacturer/ agent, configuration of the system, itemised list of accessories and spares supplied with the equipment, shelf life and record time and quantity of the same. Thereafter a detailed log of preventive and breakdown maintenance needs to be kept. These records are of great use when taking replacement decisions. They are also useful for improving system performance.
Computers play an important role in the maintenance of hospital equipment and keeping record of their breakdown and repair history. Advanced biomedical test, calibration and analysis equipment are available that greatly assist in the maintenance of a wide spectrum of medical devices.
Amongst the various tests that they perform these equipment have the capability of downloading pertinent information from the medical devices that can then be transferred to the main computer system. This way the biomedical engineering department can log and keep track of the performance levels of the medical devices during their lifetime. These computers can be interfaced with similar systems in the hospital, wherever required, for easy access to maintenance data from different locations. A proper control over maintenance schedules, performance levels, maintenance costs and other related data etc. is available through this information.
