EBME Forums Forums Management Equipment Libraries Infusion Pump / Bed ratio

We are a 550 bed hospital and we are soon going out to tender for Volumetric Infusion pumps. I need some figures on how many infusion pumps we'll need to cover the hospital for the equipment library. Finance wants some evidence based research! Any ideas where I can get it from?

Haven't "Finance" heard of Google, then?

Other thoughts are:- presumably users want these pumps ... so why not get them to justify the expenditure (of tax-payers' money)? Isn't this the sort of thing that PASA, MHRA et al are supposed to be able to help with? And, lastly, how many pumps are you managing with at the moment?

Hint: speak to the companies likely to bid ... they will have all the data (and more) your little heart desires.

Cheers Geoff......

We are a 700 bed hospital.

We don't supply volumetrics to either ITU or neonats - they have approx 50 volumetrics between them.

Our Equipment Library provides approx 170 volumetric pumps to the rest of the hospital.

Allowing for the practice of 'all infusions should go through a pump', we estimate that we require a further 20 pumps to meet demand.

Cheers

Mark

0.27 "library" pumps per bed (and 0.34 pumps per bed overall), then (my own "rule of thumb" for volumetric pumps would be 0.3 per bed overall). Anyone else have any thoughts on this one?

How many infusions per day (hour, week, month, year) per bed do you reckon?

PS: it may be of interest to record that twenty-five plus years ago that figure would have been more like 0.05 (or five pumps for a 100-bed hospital)!

Asking a company who is trying to sell you things how many you should buy.......I am sure they will give you honest advice not biased in any way.

How many do you have at the moment?
Is that enough, too few or too many?

Surely you know best how many is needed rather than taking an average of some research project. Every hospital is different in the types of patients treated and the protocols used so what is right for one is not right for another.
At one place I worked (which was a specialist centre) we had more syringe pumps than IV pumps. At this hospital which is three times the size we have slightly more syringe pumps and three times as many IV pumps. And they are all in use.
Tell your purchasing department to............
Robert

Not company ... companies. It's known as the "magic of the market place" (I think)

Thanks all for the replies... very helpful... cheers...

Huw
One thing to bear in mind is the use of gravity feed sets as when stocking out our Library we allowed for the use of this type of delivery. Due to a change in nursing staff preferences against using this type of delivery find our pump resources are constantly at full stretch.

Hi Charlie, yes I tend to agree with you , we are facing the same problem now..... not many hosptals have an 'Infusuion Policy' stating when to use a pumps or gravity feed...

... no, most almost always use a pump these days!

Hi Geoff - do you know where these ratio's originated from? What is the evidence to guide the ratio's and where can I find it? many thanks

Welcome to the forum, noosti.


Just a figure based upon my own observations of hospital inventories and BofQ's (Bills of Quantity) of new hospital designs that I've been involved with, I'm afraid. We didn't have the world wide web available to us in those days, and had to use our own imagination and what you could call "first principles" to come up with some sort of figure.

That is, nothing scientific, just "empirical" (anecdotal) evidence.

No doubt anyone could come up with a ratio based upon reasoned argument, given an hour or two (ten). Either that or survey a number of existing hospitals. Another method (which I may have invented) is to start with an unlikely high figure (like, one pump per hospital bed), and work downwards to an unlikely low one (ten beds per pump, or 0.1 pumps per bed) ... then simply "split the difference". Resulting (in this case) at 0.5 pumps per bed. Probably about right (in the UK), I would have thought. Don't forget to let us know how you get on!

Another way to do it, and to try and "individualise" the ratio for your facility, is to take a snapshot survey of the pumps in use at any one time on the general wards and then divide that number by the total number of occupied beds.

Thanks for the suggestions - does anyone know of some published research to back these ratio's for my business case? I tried the ratios out and it seems that we are not too far off the mark!!