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

Buying used is a great way to get important medical equipment you need at a lower price, but when you're purchasing the pieces from a hospital, there's more involved than just an exchange of money for product.

For any successful transaction to be completed, it requires the combined efforts of a de-installation company, a rigging company and a crating company. Although many companies provide all of these services, each part of the equation is highly important and provides its unique challenges.

"People don't usually put as much attention on the old equipment going out as they do on the new equipment going in," says Russ Knowles, president of Remetronix, based in Port St. Lucie, Fla. "We have to count on our own site surveys to make sure we cover all the bases."

In any medical equipment move, it's important that the de-installer, riggers and craters communicate to alleviate any problems, so that even the most difficult relocation assignments run smoothly.

"If you are de-installing an MRI, the steps are decommissioning the MRI, taking off the programs and making them safe, taking off the electronics so that's all safe and taking the guards and shrouds off of it," says R. Max Mayer, president of Batavia, Ill.-based Diamond Rigging Corp. "Once that is done, the rigger's job is to take it out of that room. You need to call each other to coordinate everything so it runs smoothly."

It's also imperative to communicate with the facility staff to make sure they understand what's involved.

"A primary concern is that it is going to be released to me on the day specified," says Frank Boseman, president for S.C.-based Boseman Medical Imaging. "So you need to stay in close contact with the customer to make sure there are no delays in construction or in new equipment coming, so we don't drive 1,000 miles to find out the project has been pushed back a week."

De-Installation Challenges

De-installers are hired to remove everything from MRIs to linear accelerators to gamma knives. Boseman says that de-installs can take as little as a few hours for CT jobs or as much as three to four days for dual-plane cath lab removals; with nuclear cameras, PET and MRI in the one to two day timeframe.

The first step of any de-installation should be to see what's in the way, since the pathways, door clearances and corridor routes can pose a huge impediment to the de-installation of the machines.

Since 1993, Remetronix has done more than 20,000 projects and still sees novel challenges nearly every day.

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