Medical Device Company Tells Hospitals They’re No Longer Allowed to Fix Machine That Costs Six Figures
Hospitals are increasingly being forced into maintenance contracts with device manufacturers, driving up costs.
The manufacturer of a machine that costs six figures used during heart surgery has told hospitals that it will no longer allow hospitals’ repair technicians to maintain or fix the devices and that all repairs must now be done by the manufacturer itself, according to a letter obtained by 404 Media. The change will require hospitals to enter into repair contracts with the manufacturer, which will ultimately drive up medical costs, a person familiar with the devices said.
same rotten practices as John Deere and other manufactures, now disguised as “the risk to patient safety is too high.”
you know what else is high risk? Not repairing machines because it’s unaffordable.
Guys, you’re not thinking of the Shareholders and their need to survive open-wallet surgery here…
Businesses sure seem to love Louis Rossman content because they just keep feeding him
Reminds me of the Medtronic ventilators that got hacked to unlock them when Medtronic insisted on similar nonsense during the pandemic
Interesting, it sounds like the hospitals should return the devices and switch to something else. Would probably require a court case to force them to take it back.
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That is far from ‘how it works’ with capital equipment of this cost. It’s like steering the titanic to change a major piece of diagnostic equipment. These types of devices are integrated into the health records databases, they require gas supply of various sorts, you might need to knock out a wall to remove it, which shuts down other critical lab functions.
All in all, in my experience installing lab automation, it took over two years from the moment the decision is made to buy a 6-7 figure system to getting the first real patient data from that system. It involves architects, contractors, medical and lab directors, training, hand holding, lawsuits.
So it’s a type of vendor lock-in far worse than anything else I have encountered.
Somebody turn on the CAT symbol.
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