Medical Equipment Parts Procurement Gets a Digital Makeover; Increased Savings and Quality Follow

Challenge

Dartmouth-Hitchcock relied on a mostly manual process to procure replacement parts and maintenance for its vast inventory of medical equipment. In a typical example, the health system’s clinical engineers would call different suppliers in search of the best price, eventually faxing paper requisition forms to the chosen supplier. The routine robbed valuable time from a clinical engineering team already burdened with a chronic backlog of equipment to maintain. Of equal concern, manual procurement lacked the quality and performance data needed to prevent overspending on substandard parts.

“This is not just about technology and data; it’s about creating change from the ground up — and that means having experts to guide you to improved outcomes. The PartsSource team supported us throughout the implementation process and provides ongoing support around the use of our data. I learned that if PartsSource says they’re going to do something, they do it.”

Jon Kocurek Director of Clinical Engineering

“For years, not only would we receive parts that were dead on arrival, but we would also receive parts that worked okay on installation, and then failed two weeks later,” alled Jon Kocurek, Director of Clinical Engineering at Dartmouth-Hitchcock. “In the event of a failure, my team would have no good way of tracking warranty terms on parts. Many times, I would find we purchased a new part only to realize later it should have been covered under warranty by the manufacturer.”

Solution

The health system implemented two key initiatives to overhaul equipment procurement and servicing. First, it replaced manual procurement with the cloud-based PartsSource Pro® clinical resource management platform — a single source for ordering medical equipment and replacement parts from multiple sellers.

The solution considerably pared the number of these vendors down, consolidating over 250 OEMs and suppliers. Once they were logged into the system, users quickly discovered that searches for parts generated the best options based on price and quality. These consistent search results were powered by PartsSource’s PRECISION Procurement® technology, which injects data-driven decision support into every transaction. Additional analytics enabled clinical engineers to view a part’s availability, shipping and return history, warranty information and more.

With a newly streamlined procurement solution in place, invaluable time was returned to clinical engineers to focus on equipment work orders, service and maintenance. But the health system wanted to gain even more time for these priorities — and address longstanding CE staffing challenges.

To achieve this, it turned to PartsSource On-Site Service, a national network of pre-qualified service professionals. Dartmouth-Hitchcock was able to search for and locate these service experts right from the PartsSource Pro platform. They could even review their resumes — and if they liked what they saw, request quotes and schedule service. Best of all: service was backed by warranty and tracked with clear documentation for records and compliance.

“PartsSource service network technicians know the world we’re living in. I call on them for even the biggest projects, like when they helped us with 1,500 new infusion pumps so I wouldn’t have to pull my staff off daily preventive and maintenance work. They’re good techs — people our supervisors can send out with confidence and know that they’re going to get the job done and get it done right. PartsSource techs are an extended part of our team,” Kocurek concluded.

“PartsSource gives me the visibility I need to show the C-Suite what we’re saving and what we could potentially save on medical equipment parts and service. It would be extremely difficult to have those conversations without PartsSource analytics.”

Jon Kocurek Director of Clinical Engineering