"We benefit from the trend in which ultrasound is becoming more powerful; you see more procedures done on ultrasound that had previously been done on the bigger modalities," said Tom Seiler, General Manager of the Ambassador Medical Division of GE Healthcare. "There is more ultrasound equipment out on the market so there is greater demand for parts."

It's important to mention that Ambassador supports multiple vendors and not just GE. Ambassador also repairs parts including circuitboards, power utilities, back-end processors and peripherals such as printers and VCRs. (Note that major components such as probes for ultrasound, MRI coils and CT glassware will be covered in future reports.)





Saving money isn't the only force driving the refurbished parts business. Outright necessity also plays its part since older equipment of many modalities and applications may not be supported with new OEM parts. This has created a thriving and highly competitive parts aftermarket for all types of medical equipment. Finding parts is as easy as surfing the internet and DOTmed.com. But it's more important than ever to do your due diligence on the source of the part. It turns out that the same economic stressors that cause hospitals to keep machines longer have also led to unscrupulous practices by some parts brokers.

"In these bad economic times, some companies will take the deposit and put off on supplying the product until they can find the equipment or part to match their proposed price," cautioned Rick Stockton, president, Atlas Medical Technologies. "They don't have the part, they take the money and it comes down to the doctor trying to get something that is beyond reasonable price, expectations or operational ability.... Sometimes too good of a deal is just that."

One-Stop Shops

Since many independent companies have parts divisions that grew directly out of their service operations, they tend to specialize in certain modalities or OEMs. But what if you don't want the hassle of maintaining a vendor list for all types of equipment?

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