In Brief:
Not surprisingly, most-if not all-healthcare organizations look upon unscheduled equipment downtime as a significant impediment to providing excellent patient care. Equipment failures are encountered virtually every day wherever medical devices are in use, and each and every one of the subsequent repair calls starts the equipment downtime clock running. Although it is not strictly logical, it has been a longstanding tradition to use equipment downtime as a measure of the effectiveness of the facility's equipment maintenance program. This article discusses "a new line of attack" for reducing equipment downtime.
