EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Biomed Databases Asset Inventory

We curently have approx 9500 assets for a 800 bed hospital how does this compare at other hospital sites?

DEPENDS WHAT YOU CALL ASSETS?

ALEX

Hi Neal,

It depends on how you describe an 'Asset' and what you do with them. Here an 'Asset' is an item of equipment valued over £5000. We would use the alternative term 'inventory item'. Currently we log those items that come through the door which we support routinely.

We are a 500+ bed hospital and currently have 3000+ items on the inventory. However this is not the whole picture as we have recently been taken 'in-house' and not all of the smaller items such as O2 therapy have been entered. We are only just at the point of taking them over from their current support. I would estimate around 4500-5000 items.

I hope this helps, it will be interesting to see what other hospitals do.

Adrian

Can I ask what the link is between number of beds and the number of assets? Obviously the more beds you'd expect there to be more equipment, generally speaking, but surely the number of assets per number of technicians responsible for maintaining them is a better descriptor?

Richard,
I am asking the question because I would like to get an idea as to whether 9500 assets these being medical and laboratory feel about right for an acute 800 bed hospital.

I think what I was commenting on is that the assets to beds ratio varies between hospitals hence it doesn't really mean much - especially if the range and type of assets covered aren't specified. It's not a like for like comparison perhaps? At least an equipment/biomedical technician ratio implies that medical devices are being considered whatever the type of asset, although I know some look at beds, bleeps, comms, microwaves, fish-tanks, etc, etc. Is it not a comparison of workload or responsibilities you're after?

I work in at Royal Brompton hospital which is a highly equipmend cardio-thorasic hospital. This had a very high number of equipment on the asset register and a small number of beds. Be careful with comparisons that you are only doing like with like. A large geriatric unit can increase the bed count but with little increase in equipment where as a speciaist cardiac ITU can increase the equipment count without increasing the bed count by much.
Also do you count a monitor plus plug-in modules as one asset or many? Are beds and wheelchairs asseted? Some places do have it on the EBME register some do not.
Robert

We went down this road about a year ago, guys.

If anyone missed that one, take a look at https://www.ebme.co.uk/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/6/242.html

Maybe it's time we had an ebme.co.uk definition, maybe the following could be used for starters

Asset, an item over £5,000 and placed on a register held by finance

Inventory item, an item logged on the Medical Equipment database usually held by the EBME dept. (Should modular systems have seperate entries, I think yes if they have unique serial numbers as they are interchangeable)

Looking forward to peoples comments

Personally, I have never liked the Asset Register terminology (it is a British term, probably a throw-back from the old ESTMANCODE days – anyone for WIMS)? And yes, the Asset Register was traditionally more of a financial tool than an engineering maintenance one.

Inventory is another over-used word, best to be avoided as it means different things to different people. Americans even use the word as a verb.

What I advocate is the Control Number approach. We used this successfully for years in contractual maintenance situations in a well known Desert Kingdom. Each complete equipment (being a stand alone piece of equipment, or equipment system) is given an engineering control number, and this is the key field on whatever computer system is being used.

There are various ways of arranging the Control Numbers. They can be semi-meaningful, or simply just a number.

Regarding the systems mentioned by Bioman. Yes, there was always debate whether, for example, a diagnostic ultrasound unit should have just the one Control Number, or one for the printer, one for the VCR etc. As long as there is consistency within the hospital, I don’t believe it matters too much. I prefer to allocate just the one number for each system, although on some jobs we used to split down, say, an x-ray system into table, generator etc. because in that way we incurred less of a financial penalty if a system was down, and we couldn’t repair within 5 days. Yes, guys, that’s how it is (was) in the “real world”!

For small items, which are nevertheless “maintainable”, what we used to do is group “miscellaneous and minor” equipment under collective Control Numbers. For example, “all oxygen flowmeters in Ward 11” would be grouped together under one Control Number.

The Property Tag is something else again, and nothing to do with biomed. It is just a tracking label used by Property Management (is there such a thing in the UK NHS)?

As always, my Buddies and I stand by ready to assist with this sort of thing.