By Steven Ford

I had an MR service customer who was thinking about upgrading his system, and a physician acquaintance of his had a mobile system, not far away, that he was willing to sell at a very low price. He asked my advice.

The original price of the scanner, together with the trailer that housed it and the supporting shielding, air conditioning, water chiller, etc. was over $1.5 million and he could buy it for about 1/10 that amount. He did mostly musculoskeletal work and didn’t really require a state-of the-art scanner.
At that time, although I’d been repairing and installing MR scanners for 20 years, nobody in my company had in-depth experience on that model, so I hired an engineer who did know that machine very well. He submitted a written report to us.

The scanner was running and had ‘been a workhorse’ and there were ‘no complaints by the radiologist’, but when the equipment was tested for image quality standards set by the manufacturer, there were a number of things found failing. The cost to repair was substantial, to the extent that it would have been less expensive to buy a different scanner that didn’t have all those problems.

In addition, this older system required fills of liquid helium several times a year. That ongoing cost is predictable, as much as the cost of liquid helium is predictable, so that number has a present value equivalent.

I advised him to look elsewhere…in fact, to not look elsewhere, but to try to define his needs and then allow us or another trusted expert to find and provide equipment for him. In his case, if he was to be given that working MR for free, he’d have been better off turning down the offer. There were other better, less costly options, that would give him fewer problems.

When I started my MR business from scratch long ago, I needed a computer system for the staff. I had a consultant whom I trusted at the time, and he got bids for a server that would meet our needs. I was anxious about spending a lot of money, so I asked him about the servers for sale on eBay, which were very capable and cheap. He told me not to buy one of those, because I wasn’t a server expert. “Those computers are for guys like me, who know what to look for, what to fix, and what to avoid. Those are not for you.” Good advice. Likewise, when I purchased a phone system, I found a provider who provided phones to a local golf tournament. They’d been used three weeks ands I got them at a discount. That vendor earned my trust and serviced and upgraded our phones for many years.

Clinical managers, physicians, and hospital administrators shouldn’t directly buy medical equipment that they’re not experts on. When I was a starving college student, I repaired my own cars, frequently going to the junkyard to buy parts. Although I know something about cars, if I was looking for a used classic car, I would hire someone who knew the weak points of the model I was considering to inspect it and test it, and pay him for his expertise.

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