Hospitals With and Without Clinical Engineering Department: Comparative Analysis

Abstract

In Buenos Aires province, first and second levels are provided by City government, whereas third and fourth levels are provided by 77 provincial Hospitals. The Public System is free of charge for all citizens. In these hospitals technical support of medical devices, preventive and corrective maintenance, has been and is carried out by the vendors´ technical services (manufacturers and distributors), or by companies that are dedicated to the technical service of medical equipment. These services do not include the permanent presence of technicians or engineers in the hospital. There is an exception to the procedure mentioned in 18 hospitals, which, by means of an agreement between the MoH and the National Technological University, have implemented clinical engineering departments. The department activities are carried out by graduates and undergraduate students, who perform tasks within the Hospital every weekday in an office assigned for that purpose, and with the support of the University structure. The object of this work is to establish qualitative and quantitative differences between two hospitals with the same characteristics of health services, one with department of clinical engineering and the other with contracted services, both with the modalities explained. For this purpose there were measurements of the time that medical devices have been out of use for damage, repair costs, customer satisfaction surveys of users, administration personnel and management.