Equipment management in practice

This article describes the setting up, funding and organization of an in-house equipment management service in the Bristol & Weston Health Authority. Existing resources were redeployed to form the present service. The range of equipment now maintained under the auspices of the Medical Physics Bioengineering Group has a capital value of 12 million pounds. All work is costed and a charge made to the client for whom work is carried out. A team of 27 medical physics technicians and three graduate engineers are maintained from this source of income. This method of funding is now making way for a system of job costing which will provide a basis for comparison with an outside service.