EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Spare Parts Registration of Flowmeters and Suction Units

I want to find out if any hospital is registering their wall mounted suction units as well as the air and oxygen flow meters with an ID no?

Welcome to the forum Mohammed.

Yes, I've seen it done. Usually with small stick-on asset tags with a sequential number (but that was really more for Property Control, rather than maintenance purposes).

Myself, I have always preferred to have one record in the database for "All air flowmeters in Ward 12" (etc.) and simply make a note of the quantity following each Inspection/PM.

Flowmeter eventhough may be inexpensive will need to be tagged as well for asset control (Geoff has the point).
We don't have PM for flowmeter buy corrective maintenance is necessary. No major repair will be carried out as the likelihood of replacing them is almost certain based on cost incurred. If you follow the other thread for flowmeter, some flowmeters have a warranty of 7 years (worth considering).

Hi Mohammed. We engrave all ours.

Isn't engraving of medical equipment being stopped for the purpose of Infection control?

Thanks. This is what we are looking to do for Property control, however (as Roger mentions), we don't have PM for flowmeters.

We don't PM flowmeters either, but if you don't put them and wall suction into the asset register how do you know how many you have, their age and the value of the devices? e.g. We have approximately 270 flowmeters at say £100 = £27k and approximately the same number of wall suction at say £200 = £54k. That would be £81k of medical devices that the Health Board did not have a value on.

Shareef,
We have all our flowmeters / suctions on the inventory and they have ppm schedules.
If you bought them from suppliers such as Oxylitre or Therapy Equipment these schedules are readily available.
The problem can be the shear numbers we have thousands. That said if someone goes to attach a thoracic drain to a suction and it over sucks (excuse the language) you have a major problem if an incident is raised and investigated.
Best method I've used in recent years is to get the general managers for each directorate to tell you how often you want them tested in what areas (compared to manufacturers spec).
Include Risk management in the findings as well.
And make sure someone at high level signs off the agreement.

Yes (I was going to wade in earlier, but have resisted up until now) ... everything needs to be PM'd (in my humble opinion), even (or, perhaps, especially) if the I/PM "procedure" amounts to little more than a "quick look".

PM is the raison d'être of the in-house hospital biomed department!

I took over this service for our Trust last year and all the equipment I buy is individually serial numbered. I do record each item on our management database and the date at which it requires a major overhaul. The old Brother printer then adds a label showing the date for major service and our equipment number to each item