Medical Device Company Tells Hospitals They’re No Longer Allowed to Fix Machine That Costs Six Figures
Hospitals are increasingly being forced into maintenance contracts with device manufacturers, driving up costs.
The manufacturer of a machine that costs six figures used during heart surgery has told hospitals that it will no longer allow hospitals’ repair technicians to maintain or fix the devices and that all repairs must now be done by the manufacturer itself, according to a letter obtained by 404 Media. The change will require hospitals to enter into repair contracts with the manufacturer, which will ultimately drive up medical costs, a person familiar with the devices said.
Reminds me of the Medtronic ventilators that got hacked to unlock them when Medtronic insisted on similar nonsense during the pandemic
same rotten practices as John Deere and other manufactures, now disguised as “the risk to patient safety is too high.”
you know what else is high risk? Not repairing machines because it’s unaffordable.
Businesses sure seem to love Louis Rossman content because they just keep feeding him
IIRC this is the reason McDonald’s ice cream machines were always down, because the Taylor company that made them had this exact same contract, but they finally reversed that policy a few years ago. Now Terumo Cardiovascular is doing the exact same shitty practice, likely with the exact same outcome: broken machines that don’t work when you need them to. One step forward two steps back in this fucking dystopia
Taylor/McD goes deeper than that. Tit for tat bs.
Even worse, the McD ice cream machine issue was caused my McD themselves, by having requirements around cleaning cycles that were tighter than the machine could do.
The same machines worked fine at other companies.
Guys, you’re not thinking of the Shareholders and their need to survive open-wallet surgery here…
Interesting, it sounds like the hospitals should return the devices and switch to something else. Would probably require a court case to force them to take it back.
That is far from ‘how it works’ with capital equipment of this cost. It’s like steering the titanic to change a major piece of diagnostic equipment. These types of devices are integrated into the health records databases, they require gas supply of various sorts, you might need to knock out a wall to remove it, which shuts down other critical lab functions.
All in all, in my experience installing lab automation, it took over two years from the moment the decision is made to buy a 6-7 figure system to getting the first real patient data from that system. It involves architects, contractors, medical and lab directors, training, hand holding, lawsuits.
So it’s a type of vendor lock-in far worse than anything else I have encountered.
good luck with that. the shell company that holds the IP rights only works with one vendor to manufacture it. so nobody else can make it or sell it.
Somebody turn on the CAT symbol.
Illegal here.
Poor countries where this is still legally possible.
Read about John Deere.
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