Supporting management of medical equipment for inpatient service in public hospitals: a case study

This work presents a study of medical equipment availability in the short and long term. The work is divided in two parts. The first part is an analysis of the medical equipment inventory for the institution of study. We consider the replacement, maintenance, and reinforcement of the available medical equipment by considering local guidelines and surveying clinical personnel appreciation. The resulting recommendation is to upgrade the current equipment inventory if necessary. The second part considered a demand analysis in the short and medium term. We predicted the future demand with a 5-year horizon using Holt-Winters models. Inventory analysis showed that 27% of the medical equipment in stock was not functional. Due to this poor performance result we suggested that the hospital gradually addresses this situation by replacing 29 non-functional equipment items, reinforcing stock with 40 new items, and adding 11 items not available in the inventory but suggested by the national guidelines. The results suggest that general medicine inpatient demand has a tendency to increase within the time e.g. for general medicine inpatient service the highest increment is obtained by respiratory (12%, RMSE=8%) and genitourinary diseases (20%, RMSE=9%). This increment did not involve any further upgrading of the proposed inventory.