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Toco Fetal Transducer Repairs - 5 Year Warranty
During the month of February 2008, L & D dept. head got very upset with the Clinical Engineering Manager. In that meeting, she presented the tracking record and performance issues with the fetal transducers - Toco & Ultrasound (Fetal Heart) that shocked everyone. She pointed out that she had been complaining about it for last 4 years and finally started keeping the track record for almost last 2 years. For some reason, our Clinical Engineering manager was hell bent on sending the repair work to a specific company and always ignored the end user complain saying that the nurses do not handle properly. It is true that there has always been some physical breakage due to mishandling but the tracking data presented in the meeting clearly indicated the poor quality repairs, repeated failures and overall poor performance. Though the repair cost per transducer was very low, by way of repeated service the amount paid per unit turned out to be more than a new transducer from the original manufacturer that too in less than a year.
Our director ordered to replace the repaired transducers with new from the original manufacturer. The purchasing department came with the price quote that was close to a quarter million dollars to replace all of them. The warranty offered was about a year and the management got concerned over the high cost of the replacement as well as incurring cost every year. We were asked to find out alternative vendors for the quality repairs.
Back to square one, we started using different company for our repairs of Toco transducers. The issue became very hot when some patient had complications during the labor and relative threatened to sue based on the poor quality of monitoring devices. Looks like the dude was techy and noticed the problem. We started testing each repaired item before putting into usage. It was time consuming and stressful as we are short staffed due to economic situation and number of PMs performed per month demands us to stay late every day. We were not happy with the quality of repairs. The solution - we changed to another vendor and a month passed, same problem of poor quality of repairs. Again changed vendor, same problem continued and by the end of the year we had already used 6 different companies other than the one that we were using for years.
During the December 2008, the management decided to buy at least 20% of new transducers from the original manufacturer. It was based on the testing records and our recommendations. Meanwhile we found a company that charged more but assured guaranteed performance and 2 year warranty but price quote was shot down by the purchasing department and the clinical engineering manager.
Beginning of the year 2009, the issue was discussed in the meeting for department budgets and L & D head brought a print out of the blog that talked about the same problem we were facing and company recommended by the blogger was one that was shot down by our purchasing department!!! Our director checked out the blog and gave us approval to try out the services from the company out of Georgia. We are satisfied with the quality and moreover L & D is extremely happy with the performance for last 6 months. We are not blamed any more! Nor we blame Nurses for poor handling!
The new vendor makes sense to us as they pointed out some of the inherent problems with particular models and the simple remedy that reduces cost as well as down time. Last Monday, we were informed by this vendor that all our rebuilt fetal ultrasound transducers M1355A have warranty not only for 2 years as a whole but the also for 5 years on crystal bonding which is a very common problem (rattling). We did drop the rebuilt transducer from second floor about 26 ft. and the crystal did not come off. Only thing that got slightly affected was the belt buckle but the transducer worked just fine! In regular usage the drop would be at the most from 6 -7 ft. if the monitors are mounted high on wall or bedside trolley.
We hope the following blog link would also help you and would be happy to share our experience. The key factor is precise tracking and unbiased analysis. The approval of the vendor should be strictly based on the quality of the work rather than taking their word for granted.
http://www.avalontoco.blogspot.com/
Our director ordered to replace the repaired transducers with new from the original manufacturer. The purchasing department came with the price quote that was close to a quarter million dollars to replace all of them. The warranty offered was about a year and the management got concerned over the high cost of the replacement as well as incurring cost every year. We were asked to find out alternative vendors for the quality repairs.
Back to square one, we started using different company for our repairs of Toco transducers. The issue became very hot when some patient had complications during the labor and relative threatened to sue based on the poor quality of monitoring devices. Looks like the dude was techy and noticed the problem. We started testing each repaired item before putting into usage. It was time consuming and stressful as we are short staffed due to economic situation and number of PMs performed per month demands us to stay late every day. We were not happy with the quality of repairs. The solution - we changed to another vendor and a month passed, same problem of poor quality of repairs. Again changed vendor, same problem continued and by the end of the year we had already used 6 different companies other than the one that we were using for years.
During the December 2008, the management decided to buy at least 20% of new transducers from the original manufacturer. It was based on the testing records and our recommendations. Meanwhile we found a company that charged more but assured guaranteed performance and 2 year warranty but price quote was shot down by the purchasing department and the clinical engineering manager.
Beginning of the year 2009, the issue was discussed in the meeting for department budgets and L & D head brought a print out of the blog that talked about the same problem we were facing and company recommended by the blogger was one that was shot down by our purchasing department!!! Our director checked out the blog and gave us approval to try out the services from the company out of Georgia. We are satisfied with the quality and moreover L & D is extremely happy with the performance for last 6 months. We are not blamed any more! Nor we blame Nurses for poor handling!
The new vendor makes sense to us as they pointed out some of the inherent problems with particular models and the simple remedy that reduces cost as well as down time. Last Monday, we were informed by this vendor that all our rebuilt fetal ultrasound transducers M1355A have warranty not only for 2 years as a whole but the also for 5 years on crystal bonding which is a very common problem (rattling). We did drop the rebuilt transducer from second floor about 26 ft. and the crystal did not come off. Only thing that got slightly affected was the belt buckle but the transducer worked just fine! In regular usage the drop would be at the most from 6 -7 ft. if the monitors are mounted high on wall or bedside trolley.
We hope the following blog link would also help you and would be happy to share our experience. The key factor is precise tracking and unbiased analysis. The approval of the vendor should be strictly based on the quality of the work rather than taking their word for granted.
http://www.avalontoco.blogspot.com/
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