Development of a Standard of Practice for Medical Device Preventive Maintenance in BC Hospitals

Abstract

This paper describes the process to establish a recommended minimum standard of practice for medical device preventive maintenance (PM) and performance assurance (PA) inspections in B.C. hospitals. This is a project embarked by the Clinical Engineering Committee of B.C. (CECBC) in 2003/04 to assist biomedical engineering departments to assess their medical device PM/PA requirements. A simple ranking system based on risk and utilization of each type of medical device was developed as a first level criterion to determine PM/PA requirements. Based on this ranking system, each hospital region then reviewed their list of medical devices and assigned their own ranking scores and PM/PA intervals. The scores and intervals were reviewed by the CECBC to arrive at a consensus of the minimum mandatory and recommended PM/PA interval for each of the common device types. The result for this exercise is included in this paper. In addition, a list of essential PM/PA procedures for each device type is being developed as part of this project.