These last two weeks have been crazy for many of my clients as they rush to help healthcare providers source equipment and prepare for the wave of patients that most experts believe will be coming to most communities.
The shelves have been emptied of most of the critically needed general medical equipment from beds, to ventilators, patient monitors, thermometers, etc. You may have noticed that I have been offering a much wider variety of equipment as my “general medical” sources suggest products that were only a month ago kept around for either parts or scrap. In an emergency, people can be quite inventive in how to make old items work again or for unintended purposes.
When it came to “first line” equipment, like ventilators and beds, any make, model or age worked.
With other items, like portable x-ray units, the call has generally been for new equipment, or at least refurbished equipment. That makes sense, as hospitals want to know for sure that the equipment meets all HIPAA, FDA, regulatory and quality standards. When ordering multiple items, it is best that all units work the same for ease of use and lack of having to retrain on each piece of equipment.
As we move to a second stage of this emergency, things will be changing. Age and beauty will not be as important.
So here’s my suggestion. Take some of this downtime we will be having and carefully review your used equipment inventory. Let me know of complete systems you have and whether you are willing to certify that they are in complete working condition. Let me have key images of the equipment and labels.
I plan to put out a weekly list of products from all that respond. This is one way for each of us to do our small part helping the supply chain in this time of worldwide need. Quite frankly, it may also help maintain some cash flow at a time when your normal business channels will be disrupted.
Hope to hear from you.
All our best to you and your families from Carol and me.
Daniel Giesberg
AMD Technologies
310.471.8900 ext 300
Great article.