It’s not a fun subject.
No sexy alarmist headlines to see, no Tweets or Facebook Likes:
YOUR HOSPITAL EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE IS ON SCHEDULE AND OUT OF DATE!
But this is true for many healthcare institutions.
Hospitals reporting 100% compliant are probably not inspecting all their medical equipment on time.
Inspecting equipment 100% on time is almost impossible to achieve.
The accreditation standard is to follow a schedule of inspections 100% of the time.
Therefor hospitals can report 100% completion rates and be “compliant.”
Result: Patient safety issues. And no one reports or knows the actual inspection completion rates of equipment for hospitals – they know the rates of adhering to a schedule, but not of the number of devices inspected.
Put another way:
What do you think the reaction would be if the airline industry announced that maintenance inspections on aircraft would be tracked by how often technicians report to work on time – instead of tracking the numbers of aircraft actually inspected? The obvious answer is there would be some sort of intense reaction to this news. However, this is exactly how the Joint Commission rates compliance for the periodic maintenance of medical equipment.