For most hospitals, which remain in the film realm, internal biomedical personnel typically provide regular maintenance on the equipment. Many institutions also use third-party, independent service organizations (ISOs) to train staff, provide parts, installation of new or used equipment, and up to full service maintenance and repair.

Mammography units, used for both screening and diagnostic breast cancer detection, are fairly reliable machines and generally considered to be workhorses. Nevertheless some service problems can arise apart from the need for regular calibration, photo timing adjustments, and inspection. Service typically entails tube or circuit board replacement, new compression paddles, and replacement or repair of bucky trays, which are the film cassette holders on the front of the machine.


"We focus exclusively on mammography and have done so for about 25 years," said James McGinty, President, Digitec Medical, Lawrenceville, Georgia. "We offer sales, service, training, parts, and support. We are a smaller company than the OEMs. We are a little more flexible and have better pricing. And focusing exclusively like we do, we're able to interface with the customer more seamlessly than an OEM. It's a little bit tighter relationship."

That hands-on, close customer service approach is what ISOs pride themselves on, as well as unsurpassed knowledge of the inner workings of the equipment.




"Some companies do what they call 'spray and pray,' they spray paint it, and pray that it works. We take the opposite approach," McGinty assured. "We do not remanufacture, meaning take it down to nuts and bolts and rebuild it. But we know which particular part should be replaced. We completely calibrate every aspect of the system. We do a complete survey of the performance of the system before it leaves our office. It's installation-ready and fine-tuned on site. Every element has been gone through, and tested the way we know a physicist is going to do it."

That attention to detail typifies the experienced ISO. "We provide parts and refurbished systems and free tech support to customers," said Darrel Kile of Classic Diagnostic Imaging, Solon, Ohio. "Whoever is doing the work on the machine in the hospital, if they need a part or have a problem, they call us and we do our best to get them the information they need or the part." His company also provides a 3 percent give-back in training credits to use at RSTI (the Radiological Service Training Institute). "A lot of big hospital systems spend anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 on parts [for all medical equipment] per year. By spending that with us they get 3 percent back to train their people."

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