EBME Forums Forums Management Medical Equipment Management Medical Gas Pipeline Systems. (mgps).

How many departments get involved with the above ?
And to what extent ?
Do you provide (competant person)CP for work done under permit to work ?
Do you do ppm to terminal outlet units ?
If you do ppm as above and how often ?
Do you get involved with shutdowns to mgps and to what extent ?
Id like to hear any constructive comments.

The simple answers are No, No, No, ...etc.
We have a dividing line of the wall. If it is attached to the wall or behind it the estates department look after it. Even monitor brackets and the like they do, they have the plans where pipes and wires are and take the responsibility if they drill in to them.
Flowmeters etc are done by BME, the terminal points by estates and so on.
It works quite well and we all know our equipment and where our responsibility lies.
You obviously get calls for the wrong equipment, "leaking flowmeters" when it is actually the terminal unit, you just have to redirect them.
We do help out with shut downs by supplying extra gas regulators or electric suction etc. But to no real extent.
Robert

Ditto RoJo's setup.
The major upcoming problems in this area stem from the new standards of compliance for construction, use, testing of high pressure hoses, which are likely to add significantly to unit cost. THis is of significance when seen in light of the MHRA edict on HP hoses, their checking/replacement etc.

I would love to hear from anyone who has 'cracked' this one in terms of the manufacture/supply of hoses (initial research suggests that many anaesthesia equipment manufacturers are not yet compliant, let alone 3rd party providers)

We have a Pharmacist QA who undertakes the work of Medical Gas Testing in conjunction with the estates dept. There appear to be strict guidelines laid down by the British Pharmocopea regarding acceptable limits.

Afraid we are the same KM, we only deal with kit up to the wall.

EH.

P.S. Happy Easter :0)

As stated by previous replies anything attached is under the remit of estates. You may also want to read HTM 2022, which lists the relevant legal aspects of working on MGPS.

We're the same - only deal with equipment that connects to the supply, not the supplies themselves or the wall fittings. We get involved if they are shutting down a section of the system - supplying regulators for cylinders and electric suction machines etc.

There is a person in Pharmacy who does all the purity checks and Estates do the flow tests etc All the actual wall points are checked regularly by an engineer from Penlon / East Healthcare - who also deals with any repairs.

I know that any work on any of these supplies requires a permit-to-work and then lots of tests and checks afterwards.

Same as everyone else Karlos

We do everything this side of the wall, the Estates look after the outlets and pipeline stuff.

They do make the outlets safe and use M.P.I. for contract repair and service.

We have had Estates blokes do the relevant training as far as Authorised and Competent training.

Well here is my slant on all of this.(sorry, it's long !)
We used to undertake the CP and AP work (seperate people - 'cos it has to be)within the Med eng function at the Trust.
For various reasons (mainly available staff time and increasing medical equipment inventory)this has now been handed back to engineering colleagues in Estates, who maintain the distribution work as required under HTM 2022 (the standard was HTM 22 when we were involved).
Overall the permit to work system is in place to ensure the a formal system of work notification/ authorisation and documentation is in place to control piped medical gas systems work.
It involves an AP a CP and QC work, all of which are seperate duties and provide cross-checks on each of the work roles if carried out correctly.
Is it worth going there for and EBME function, - well that can depend on a few issues, such as :-

Staff training and competancy, tooling, permit system, management support, maybe a chartered engineer thrown in there somewhere (?).
Then it is worth considering who is going to look after the 'plant' equipment :- Air compressors, receivers and dryers, changeover manifolds, Vac pumps and receivers, VIE (bulk liquid Qxy)and so on.
There are quite a few aspects to manage, in all of this as you can see.
Best advice for me, is from places like Eastwood Park (use to call it Falfield when i went !) they run excellent course for all aspects of MPGV management and maintenance and I attended some of these in the dim and distant past.
In my humble opinion, If anyone wants to do PMGV , don't be worried about it , but just do it right, or don't bother at all !
(P.S. External contract costs can be quite large for this type of work, and there are benefits for organisations, in taking some/all of this work in-house, but again this is no place for 'half a job' with this work)
(P.P.S. we now only look after all of the stuff 'downstream' of the Terminal Unit outlets including Therapy regs/Flowmeters/injectors etc, which seems to be more of the norm these days, however we still have a set of 'metered leaks' - bet no one remembers them ???????)
Best wishes -
Steve.

Good stuff.
We do look after the mgps to a certain extent sharing responsibility with maintenance.
We do terminal units ppms to them and pressure switches for low / high alarms.
They do all other work, usually via contractor.
Therefore we are CPs (including relevant training)
and the Estates Manager is the AP.
All work is done via the relevant permit to work systems and QA are called in where the AP requires.