EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Spare Parts Spare parts rip off!

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Like this!

As I was saying to Mithrandir earlier (before my post was deleted by some unseen hand) ... why do you guys allow the gougers to do this?

I can only assume that you simply don't have the time to root around looking for alternative suppliers. Which is fair enough, I suppose. Perhaps it would be worthwhile (for the larger departments especially) hiring someone to do that sort of thing.

But meanwhile, what about the idea of NHS Biomed Departments "clubbing together"?

Here's another one...

A company produces very expensive audiological equipment, but then they insist on selling assemblies instead of individual parts. So to replace the speaker which is mounted on the top case using a pivot rod and a small wire harness, I have to spend £831.20 ex VAT on a whole new top case with the speaker pre-mounted.

Oh, but I can save money by calling in their engineer. The cost of his travel, labour, parts etc all in is £622.55 ex VAT. How can that be?

Same with the main PCB, which can be blown up by the failure of a patient response button (the on-screen error code is "unspecified error = 0" - I kid you not)*. This costs the hospital £1000 ex VAT if I want to fit it, but £600 ex VAT if the engineer comes to fit it.

I resent the company protecting their business and staff by effectively pricing the hospital out of letting me doing the job I am employed to do, as if I am some unqualified yokel.

I have identified at least £3250 that I have personally saved the Trust in the last two years by using my skills to repair parts that I was told I had to spend thousands on replacing, or by using the cheaper option when it comes to calling in the engineer. I still think deals like this are wrong, whatever way you look at it.

Just to clarify before it goes crackers on here, the repairs I am talking about mean sourcing exact alternative capacitors, coin cells, sounders, etc, not sticking things together with sticky tape or Araldite. Would those "Equipment Management Services Ltd" companies do the same? I highly doubt it!

* BTW: The error was quite clearly a known fault when I phoned the company for an explanation of "unspecified error = 0". So why did they not issue any kind of field change notification to spare us the potential problem in the first place? We were fortunate that we escaped without a blown board, but we were lucky. Anyone would think that they were counting on this error to generate them some income...

Clare / all,
On a slight asside. You need to make sure you get the recognition for any / all savings you make for your trust CIP just like the ones youve mentioned.
Then at least if any axe threatens to fall you can say look what we save you and its been recognised. Im thinking especially where you take workon that saves say ITU having a service contract. Its not always recognised that whilst ITU budget saves the cost, its only cause you are there.

Karl,

We tried that approach several times but the bean counters are only interested in recurrant savings i.e. savings that can be applied year after year. They are not interested in one off savings no matter how much we save on individual jobs. the other week we got a quote for the replacement of a DVD drive and USB card on an ultrasound sacnner which with labour+vat came to approx. £1K. I cleaned the inside of the drive and ran a head cleaning disc through it, problem solved, labour costs approx £30.

I'm sure we can all point to jobs where we are saving our employers thousands every year, but how do we impress these facts on them?

On a slightly different note, we are being asked to cut 7% off our budget this year (after cutting 5%p.a. for the last 3 years) this is untennable. We couldn't insist that external contractors reduce their service charges so why should we be forced to reduce ours? Has anybody successfully argued against these cuts?

While I can quite see that "they" are not particularly interested in the individual savings, "they" would be interested (and impressed) if you, as a department, were to provide some detail of total cost savings across the financial year. If you put together a report (to the finance dept , cc the ceo) which outlined these saves and could, in plain accounting terms, show value, then you might get a different reaction.

We need to remember that these people (and, yes, they are human) work in a different mind frame from us engineers. Their motivations and interests are different. Talk to them in their language and in terms of things that they are interested in and you may get a different reaction.

Here's another way (that I have probably suggested a couple of times before) ... stop fixing the kit for a week or two, and see if "they" notice you then!

so, is the "off topic" aimed at you or me?

At any and all comments not falling within the general heading of "Spare Parts Rip-off"!