Impact of Repair and Maintenance of Hospital Equipment on Health Services in Government Hospitals in North—Eastern Region of India

The electro-medical devices play an important role in any hospital and health care institution in providing better health services in terms of treatment and diagnostics, to the people. The repairing and maintenance of electro-medical equipment and proper management of regular maintenance is an important aspect of any health care institution, particularly in the North-Eastern regions of India where there is scarcity of spare parts of electro-medical equipment and poor maintenance services due to geographically hard region thereby effecting the health services critically. It helps to improve the health services, keep the devices in proper working condition which is essential for accurate diagnostics and proper treatment, avoid the unwanted expenditure in procurement of new devices and increases the life cycle of medical devices. The present work was focused on survey of the health status of electro-medical equipment, do the repair and maintenance of lower and medium range equipment and analyze the impact of the same on health services. For this, the government hospitals in the state of Tripura, were chosen and a comprehensive survey was done from 2013 to 2017. During this duration, repair and maintenance was also carried out and impact analysis on health services were done. Training of basic maintenance procedures was provided to more than 75 hospital personals and others working in related areas. Analysis of the data revealed that the basic cause of failure or malfunctioning of electro-medical equipment were—miss handling of the device, lack of knowledge of basic maintenance, unavailability of spare parts and lack of prompt maintenance services by the professionals. Timely repair and maintenance of electro-medical devices helped to improve the health services provided by the respective hospitals. It also helped to prevent the malfunctioning of the devices, reduce the down time and increased the life time of the device. The training to the hospital staff helped to improve them know how about the maintenance procedure of the electro—medical devices.