EBME Forums Forums Management Medical Equipment Management External quality accreditation for EBME Dept.

Has any body written a paper on the advantages/disadvantages of external quality accreditation. Setting up and running costs including manpower requirments. We are a very small Dept looking after the maintenance of a wide range of equipment by internal staff and contract.

Peter
We are also a small dept of 4, part of Estates and responsible for in-house and contract maintenance. A few years ago Primary Healthcare Trusts were not allowed to deal with non-accredited contractors. As we were employed by the Acute Trust, this included us. The Estates Dept, including us, gained accreditation, then Trusts up here disappeared and we are all one big happy family again. We have maintained this accreditation as it proves to others that we operate to a particular standard and people who use our services are still quite keen to see that on our letters, memos etc. The setting up costs were expensive as we used an outside agency to guide us through. Once all the procedures are written (by yourselves)and the first accreditation visit has taken place and you get the certificate, maintaining accreditation should be simple, provided you follow the procedures in you ISO manual.
Personnaly, i would much prefer to have this accreditation that not.
Graham

Tax-payers money well spent, then, would you say? Were any improvements made along the way in the service you provide?

I would have to say yes to that Geoff. We now have lots of procedures actually written down rather than just by hearsay and word of mouth. These are as simple as what do do when issuing a loan nebuliser or working on "live" electrical equipment. Quite useful when I'm not around to steer the ship. No uncertainty, just look it up and there it is. Lots of pro-forma technical reports that follow procedures in technical manuals (better than writing pages. Accreditation also shows that we all service/PPM equipment in the same way.
Graham

Our dept has been ISO 9000 accredited for years. The way I describe it is that "the book says that things are done a certain way and you always do it that way, irrespective of whether it is right or not."
Ours was simple enough to set up and is easy to maintain with a few process diagrams, some quality procedures and the important work instructions. BSI visit and audit different sections of our dept on an annual basis.

“Policies and Procedures”? I still say that all that good stuff is nothing more than what well-organized technicians have been doing anyway for at least the last thirty years! “Accreditation” has always sounded like jobs for the boys to me. I still recall the wallys who were sent out to inspect one hospital I was involved with out in Saudi Arabia. They didn’t know anything, but certainly had plenty of tick-boxes! The system we had in place (set up with due regard to local circumstances as they then prevailed) was already superior to any they had in mind! Why do I feel so weary all of a sudden?

I was sceptical of implementing a quality system (many yrs ago), but it does improve the way things are done and worth the expense. We have been using ISO9000 and find it simple enough to manage and a 'feather in our cap'. I also think it is unfair for us to expect out suppliers to be quality registered if we aren't.

That’s all very well when you’re spending other people’s money, Mate! Jobs for the boys, as I’ve said before. Meanwhile, people like me have been getting the work done, following “best practice”, and generally organizing things along the way for the last thirty years.

There are always dissenters

In a previous life I was a dissenter. I could only see all the work involved getting accreditation, I could not see the benefits. I worked in a small manufacturing company that implemented ISO9000 and I can assure all who might be considering putting in the effort that it improved the company's products and the service given to the customers. I would recommend any organisation to go for it.