EBME Forums Forums Management Equipment Libraries KCI pumps

Anyone have any experience of maintaining these wound vacuum pumps? (Not exactly sure what they do - please enlighten me)

We are thinking of buying 2 and putting them in the equipment library. (We currently rent them which is expensive).

The vacuum pump is used with a dressing to create a negative pressure environment that assists with recovery after surgery. We have several in the equipment library and they are expensive. Consumables are provided with the vacuum pump and cross charged back to divisions moonthly. Maintennace is carried out in house and the only drawback is KCI appear to be the only compant that supplies these devices.

We own 4 of these but have another (12?) quantity on loan from and maintained by KCI. Our pumps seem to have two recurring problems:-
1. The small bleed hole regularly gets blocked causing a failure message
2. The capacitor on the control board used to smooth/regulate the pump supply gives out; not so frequent as the first problem but I have replaced three capacitors in the three years of owning the pumps.
I have also had one pump motor go o/c. Generally they are not a big problem.

We have some of the VAC Pumps here in our Library. They are used regularly. Some of ours are owned by us & some are rental products. We have not experienced many technical problems, however if they are not used upright the filters get blocked.

On our website we have more info on what it is & how it does it at KCI VAC web page (at the bottom of this page is a link to a second page - our product of the month feature on the VAC Pump)

Hope this helps, Mark

Hello

At St Michael's Hospital in Toronto, we are using the ATS VAC and we are experiencing some pressure discrepancies. The set pressure does not match the one measured with a manometer. Does anyone out there would know of a procedure for pressure calibration for the ATS VAC?

Thank you.

Just for interest we have a manual for the older "Classic" model but not the newer ATS.

Also we brought into the library because a) rental costs high, pay back is less than a year and most places have at least 2 on the go at any one time. b) mini stcks of expensive consumables (Large abdo pack of 5 is £900) were accumualting around the hospital. We buy the stocks in and re-charge on a monthly basis on usage.

We were going to purchase more but KCI put the price up. Personally I think they are overpriced but the company have us over a barrel in that there is no alternative that does the job as good. This is a growing area and being prescribed on a daily basis I would have thought KCI could afford to drop the purchase cost of the units to a more realistic level and they would see an even greater take up in its use. At present they are not doing themselves any favours.

One can think of other companies that seem to have a similar hold over us.

Does anyone have a tech manual or service document for a VAC? In the US they are only factory serviced, but my unit gets called quite often to trouble shoot them. Since there are no published spec there is nothing we can really do besides ensure there is suction in the unit. Feel free to post the link or e-mail me the document.

thanks,

We are going down the managed service route. We are probably looking at getting 8 on an annual agreement. We looked at the purchase option but then we had concerns around clinical training and guidelines, obsolescence, maintenance etc. Has anyone else gone down the managed service route?
There are still considerable savings compared to renting.

John,

we are also going down the same route as you which is a better option than purchase.

Alex

John,
We started renting these pumps a while ago, then our ward managers did a cost comparison and found savings were to be had in purchasing the pumps outright.
Unfortunatley I do not think they factored maintenace into the equation (as always).
Sods law, as soon as we bought the blighters.. they went wrong (what a surprise). No major problems however other than one with a totally blank LCD. Being touch screen, we decided to return them to the service vendors for repair.

I aslo believe consumables for these pumps is quite high. I seem to recall, one dressing being quoted at (don't hold me to this) £95 each !

Good luck with what ever you decide.