The hospital, I work for is all the time purchasing new equipment to keep up with current technique. The news piece of equipment for our hospital is called the Impella which is inserted in the Cardiac Cath Lab. The Impella is a left ventricular assisted device that is used when an individual has had damage to the heart and the heart function is very low. This occurs a lot when an individual has had a heart attack. This device is used to help rest the heart in hopes of the individual heart function improving. The problem that occurs is that the hospital does not replace the old technique or decrease the quantity with the new. The hospital has six of the intra aorta balloon pumps, IABP, which are older technique and the individual that we would have used the IABP in the pass; we are now using the Impella. The IABP use to be place in all patients who had coronary artery bypass graft, CABG, (open heart); during surgery, but it is now rare to have a patient with one.
The hospital could at less decrease the cost by half and decrease the quality to three instead of six, because in the last three months the hospital has not used an IABP. The Impella has been used on 10 patients in the last three months. The equipment makes no money for the hospital unless it is used on a patient. The hospital is acquiring a large amount of cost for equipment that is not being used and is depreciation. The hospital keeps budgeting for the IABP for the fear that the Impella will need repair or the need to use the IABP instead of the Impella. The hospital does not look at the cost of decreasing the number of IABP that the hospital has on hand and that with most of our contracts for equipment the company sends a replacement if the Impella was to need repairs. The hospital is so focus making sure that we have the equipment that they can not see that if the number of IABP is decrease than we could like at purchasing a second Impella and not having to budget extra money to purchase the equipment. This would be a wise move for the hospital in the fact that we are using the Impella and in return we are able to charge for the patient for the Impella and recovery some cost.
The hospital gets very focus on getting the new and best equipment, that they forget that there are ways to recover money on old equipment. Company will sometime offer a discount for trading in old equipment even if it is not the same company. Companies will also offer the equipment for free if the hospital purchases or uses certain amount of materials for the equipment. For example, the hospital receive an intra vessel ultrasound, IVUS, machine free it we purchased 10 catheters a month.