This report originally appeared in the October 2009 issue of DOTmed Business News

It's 10 p.m. and you're the biomedical engineer on call at your hospital. An X-ray machine circuit board burns out on a high-volume system. What should you do to get the part? You have several options.

If the unit is still under an OEM service contract, you're covered. But the costs in terms of dollars tied to response time may be high. As DOTmed has previously reported, the current trend is toward hospitals, imaging centers and health care providers prolonging equipment life through careful maintenance and upgrades and shifting medical equipment service in-house to reduce costs.
"You are still seeing a lot of places holding onto their machines instead of buying new. Many have capital budget freezes from concerns about the economy. People are keeping their equipment longer and looking for lower-cost service and parts solutions to keep those machines running," said Wayne Kramer, Vice President of Global Parts Operations, C&G Technologies, Inc. C&G Technologies is an equipment and service provider that went into the parts business, a common model in the medical equipment aftermarket. With their technical background, independent service organizations (ISOs) know how to handle, test, store and ship parts and they often maintain a significant inventory.

Another company that made the shift from service to parts is First Call Parts, formerly Blue Ridge Medical Imaging. The company was a refurbisher for Siemens and parlayed its technical prowess into parts repair and testing for many diagnostic imaging modalities and OEMs.

"We took our ISO refurbishment procedures and translated them to testing procedures for the parts," said Steve Bush, Director of Business Development. The company has demanding quality assurance and board level repair capabilities, and provides a six-month parts warranty, one of the longest in the industry.

Many of these specialized shops focus on a particular type of system. For instance, Platinum Medical Parts is a dedicated GE MRI parts and service company that sells and warranties used, tested parts. Given customers' reluctance to upgrade, ISOs like Platinum are faced with the growing challenge of finding systems from which to harvest medical equipment parts.




"There is a dearth of equipment available. It has become more difficult to purchase used gear. There is just not as much in the marketplace right now and that is a function of the medical economy and the greater economy," said Jeffrey Fall, President of Platinum. "At the same time, people who have stuff are hanging on to it longer. We are seeing customers that I don't think would have looked to a third-party solution five years ago coming to places like Platinum and seeing how we can help them out. That trend will continue for some time."

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