Your Linear Accelerator is never beyond refurbishment.

When you scroll through the Yellow Pages looking for an independent service provider to de-install your aging linear accelerator, you will not find very many listings. In fact, you will only find a handful of them -- if any at all.

If your hospital happens to be in the Southeastern United States, RS&A, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, may be the first company that you come across. And as you will soon find out, RS&A may do a lot more for you than simply unbolt the rigors of your old machine and crate it onto a semi-trailer.

Founded in 1997 by Roger Wood and Kenneth Wolf, RS&A can take charge of planning for the future of your used machine. The company may broker the sale of your used linear accelerator to its new owner. As Mr. Wood, a former service engineer for Variance, says, No linear accelerator is ever beyond refurbishment. After a few repairs, a ten-year-old 2100C can function even better than a new one.

The cost of a new accelerator, $2.5 million, is prohibitive to smaller clinics. Small doctors groups can purchase a ten-year-old Varian 2100C for a fraction of the cost that will easily last for another five to ten years. In fact, almost half of all de-installed linear accelerators are resold for future use. The basic radiological technology of a linear accelerator has not changed much since the machine was first developed in the 1970s.

You must give two weeks' notice to the service company before your desired date of de-installation. The physical process of de-installation takes at least two days. Administrators, nurses, doctors, plumbers, architects and medical physicists must coordinate this effort. You need to make sure that your hospital has plans for its patients while the linear accelerator is down.

RS&A can help you with these logistics.