Criticality analysis of medical equipment: A case study at King Hussein cancer center (KHCC) amman-jordan

Abstract

Criticality analysis was performed on a representative sample ofmedical equipment at King Hussein Cancer Center (KHCC.).Amman-Jordan, inorder to assess and improve the effectiveness of current maintenance managementpolicy. A sample of twenty-one medical devices was selected for thisstudy. Past failure and maintenance data, in addition to relevant financial informationwere collected for these devices and compiled into criticality ranks. Inorder to take account of the special nature of this equipment medical criticality(in terms of risk score) values were also calculated based on relevant tables ofthe American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE). Overall criticalityranking of medical equipment was then determined based on equipment cost,ASHE risk score, reliability and maintenance cost. The present results have revealedmajor flaws within the purchase and maintenance policies at KHCC. Forexample, some extremely expensive devices with extremely high-cost maintenancecontracts were revealed to exhibit low reliability values and suffer fromrepeated failures. These were within patient-sensitive cancer treatment devices.The results also have shown that under "less than optimum" maintenance practice,the ASHE risk score may be a misleading measure of equipment criticality.This was shown by comparing the obtained overall equipment criticality to theirASHE risk score where high level of discrepancy was present between the twomeasures.