Hospitals No Longer Allowed To Fix Machine That Costs Six Figures 124
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: 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.
The company, Terumo Cardiovascular, makes a device called the Advanced Perfusion System 1 Heart Lung Machine, which is used to reroute blood during open-heart surgeries and essentially keeps a patient alive during the surgery. Last month, the company sent hospitals a letter alerting them to the "discontinuation of certification classes," meaning it "will no longer offer certification classes for the repair and/or preventative maintenance of the System 1 and its components." This means it will no longer teach hospital repair techs how to maintain and fix the devices, and will no longer certify in-house hospital repair technicians. Instead, the company "will continue to provide direct servicing for the System 1 and its components." [...]
In a brochure for hospitals, Terumo advertises both its device and its maintenance program: "Advanced, precision medical equipment requires genuine parts and top-quality, specialized service -- just as getting the best medical care from qualified specialists. Terumo Cardiovascular Service has the unrivaled expertise, experience, equipment, and parts to provide the optimal level of planned service and repairs needed. Use Terumo Cardiovascular Service and avoid exposure to liability issues." A spokesperson for Terumo told 404 Media that the company "saw declining participation in this program and determined that the best way forward was to require servicing through Terumo Cardiovascular's genuine in-house Service team to continue to ensure Terumo devices are properly maintained."
"Terumo Cardiovascular's Biomed Certification Program was originally structured to train non-Terumo personnel (hospital Biomeds) to service Terumo heart-lung machines and associated hardware. Properly maintained medical devices are necessary for optimal performance which is essential for quality of patient care and outcomes," they added. "Hospitals' existing Terumo Cardiovascular Biomed certifications will remain valid through their expiration dates but will not be renewed once they expire." "It's no secret that America's healthcare system is the most expensive, and this is one of the reasons why. These machines are actually highly reliable, we've had a low cost of service for it over the last few years. And when something isn't right, we have people in-house who can fix it," a source familiar with Terumo machine repair said. "But the cost of having a service contract with a manufacturer, you're probably talking 10 times the cost. It's not a big deal having a contract for one device, but when that starts happening across many devices, it adds up in the end. If you took every hospital in America and said for every medical device in the hospital, you need to put it on an OEM [original equipment manufacturer] maintenance contract, it would tank your financial system. You just can't do that."
The company, Terumo Cardiovascular, makes a device called the Advanced Perfusion System 1 Heart Lung Machine, which is used to reroute blood during open-heart surgeries and essentially keeps a patient alive during the surgery. Last month, the company sent hospitals a letter alerting them to the "discontinuation of certification classes," meaning it "will no longer offer certification classes for the repair and/or preventative maintenance of the System 1 and its components." This means it will no longer teach hospital repair techs how to maintain and fix the devices, and will no longer certify in-house hospital repair technicians. Instead, the company "will continue to provide direct servicing for the System 1 and its components." [...]
In a brochure for hospitals, Terumo advertises both its device and its maintenance program: "Advanced, precision medical equipment requires genuine parts and top-quality, specialized service -- just as getting the best medical care from qualified specialists. Terumo Cardiovascular Service has the unrivaled expertise, experience, equipment, and parts to provide the optimal level of planned service and repairs needed. Use Terumo Cardiovascular Service and avoid exposure to liability issues." A spokesperson for Terumo told 404 Media that the company "saw declining participation in this program and determined that the best way forward was to require servicing through Terumo Cardiovascular's genuine in-house Service team to continue to ensure Terumo devices are properly maintained."
"Terumo Cardiovascular's Biomed Certification Program was originally structured to train non-Terumo personnel (hospital Biomeds) to service Terumo heart-lung machines and associated hardware. Properly maintained medical devices are necessary for optimal performance which is essential for quality of patient care and outcomes," they added. "Hospitals' existing Terumo Cardiovascular Biomed certifications will remain valid through their expiration dates but will not be renewed once they expire." "It's no secret that America's healthcare system is the most expensive, and this is one of the reasons why. These machines are actually highly reliable, we've had a low cost of service for it over the last few years. And when something isn't right, we have people in-house who can fix it," a source familiar with Terumo machine repair said. "But the cost of having a service contract with a manufacturer, you're probably talking 10 times the cost. It's not a big deal having a contract for one device, but when that starts happening across many devices, it adds up in the end. If you took every hospital in America and said for every medical device in the hospital, you need to put it on an OEM [original equipment manufacturer] maintenance contract, it would tank your financial system. You just can't do that."
Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
First the McFlurry machine, now this. Well, McDonald's (finally) got the right to repair their machines, maybe Hospitals will too someday. I mean, doing open-heart surgery has to be almost as important as making soft ice cream - right? :-)
US Copyright Office allows McDonald's to fix broken ice cream machines [usatoday.com]
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
John Deere. This is their business model, and you can expect it to be the new standard for doing business here.
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Now, understand that big pharma uses the exact same strategy to keep people on as many pills as possible.
The "health care" industry is a "sick care" industry. It's not interested in curing your disease if it doesn't come with a long term revenue stream.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, lifting weights will definitely cure people of type 1 diabetes, congenital heart defects, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, heart defects, resistant hypertension, organ failure due to physical accidents or infection, numerous types of infectious disease, etc., etc. Or maybe, just maybe exercise is not some kind of magical fix-all for every health condition. There's no denying that exercise improves general healthy, but peoplething who think that it will fix everything are just some kind
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, lifting weights will definitely cure people
Not sure what you're arguing about. OP has your point presented succinctly as the first few words of their point.
And their point is still valid.
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Sorry, I didn't realize I needed sarcasm tags for something that blindingly obvious. I'll make sure to include those next time for people with poor reading comprehension skills.
And their point is still valid.
No, their point is, overall, pretty ridiculous. Sure exercise can help with a lot of things. That even includes things like chronic pain where, for example, building up muscle can relieve stress on other areas, but most chronic conditions basically require people to keep taking medication and replacing the pills with exercise does no
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the point that prevention works a lot better than treatment is valid.
Here's an example:
Japan (or most other developed nations): emphasis on prevention, prophylactic, diet, exercise. Life expectancy: 84. Leading mortality cause: cancers.
USA: emphasis on treatment, oxycontyn, ozempic, mounjaro. Life expectancy: 79. Leading mortality cause: lifestyle diseases.
Is curing patients, or even worse, not letting them get sick, a sustainable business model?
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Heart Disease is the number one cause for Japan and the US. In fact, among females, it's actually more prominent in Japan. It's difficult to find statistics on what percentage of that is due to weight. It's estimated at 20-30% for the US, and I haven't found an estimate for Japan. It's pr
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Yes, the point that prevention works a lot better than treatment is valid.
If the OP had actually made that general point and not focused entirely on exercise, you might have a point, but you're actually shifting the goalposts here. Now, it is indeed true that prevention of various kinds can be more effective than after the fact treatment, in cases where prevention works. I will note though that there were a number of diseases on my list where there is either no known preventative measure that can be taken or where, even if a preventative measure might work, the disease is basical
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Sorry, I didn't realize I needed sarcasm tags for something that blindingly obvious.
you didn't. you just had to pay attention to the first few words of the very post you were replying to and supposedly read, literally:
"Many (but not all) of things"
which makes the point obvious and your whole pedantic lecture completely unnecessary, as some other poster specifically noted to you:
OP has your point presented succinctly as the first few words of their point.
he might have aswell just said "woooosh!". i have now highlighted those words for your convenience, since not even that was obstacle for you to fire away with just another lengthy and gratuituous rant reiterating something nobody has disputed al
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you didn't. you just had to pay attention to the first few words of the very post you were replying to and supposedly read, literally:
"Many (but not all) of things"
Oh I did, and it was still clear that the poster was exaggerating both the role of simple preventative measures in general and, for that matter, exercise alone since they did not mention any of the other possible preventative measures and only focused on exercise.
which makes the point obvious and your whole pedantic lecture completely unnecessary, as some other poster specifically noted to you:
Yes and I made the same point to that poster that regardless of that disclaimer, the OP was still exaggerating the importance of exercise as a preventative against needing pharmaceuticals for medical conditions.
he might have aswell just said "woooosh!". i have now highlighted those words for your convenience, since not even that was obstacle for you to fire away with just another lengthy and gratuituous rant reiterating something nobody has disputed all, as irrelevant as the first. in all probability because it is bloody obvious.
One might wonder what the point of th
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it was already clear, but i appreciate the effort.
the thing with exercise is that movement is a necessity for our bodies (and minds) to function properly, it's not optional, and our modern society seems suprisingly oblivious to that fact. exercise will probably not cure cancer, but if you don't move enough you are guaranteed to face all sorts of health problems down the road. if at that point you were to resort to magic solutions (aka pills, say, for example, to regulate blood pressure) instead of modifying
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the effect very much exists and has been observed in many studies.
since you refer to "the study" specifically, do you mean there were shortcomings in the original experiment that would invalidate the results? which ones? what about all the others?
other than that, you might want to say that some particular explanation of that effect has been debunked. dunning and kruger summarized it as "metacognitive deficits". there are several of them and there never has been real consensus. all of them have been challeng
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side note: Dunning Kruger study is debunked and the effect doesn't exist
You're on Slashdot. The Dunning Kruger effect is on full display all day every day here. If you can't see that? Well, I have some bad news about which side of the Dunning Kruger line you happen to fall on.
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the leading cause of death, disabilities and need for treatment are "lifestyle" ailments, mostly cardiovascular. much of the rest develop into serious problems on top of these because of lifestyle.
but go on, treat your appetite with more ozempic and more fastfood.
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Oh, sure, that would work. For type 1 diabetes though, they would probably need to get into power lifting. Bench press 340 pounds or more.
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compared to T2D, curable by getting a barbell?
False.
But by all means, pretend that exercise is a panacea. Just don't come crying to us when lifting weights doesn't magically fix your kidney stones.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, most days of sickness in your first 60 years can be attributed to your lifestyle. Broken leg? Why do you do dangerous things without securing yourself properly? Infections? Why don't you adhere to basic hygienic principles? Early onset of lung cancer, liver cancer or skin cancer? Why do you smoke, drink or sunbathe without protection? Psychiatric medication? Why do you cover up mental problems instead of working on them or do not care much for your self?
Second, while excercise will definitely help with many cardiovascular problems, there is a very large timely gap between not exercising and the need for medication. You can't blame "Big Pharma" for mending problems you caused 25 years earlier. It's not the fault of any pharmaceutical company that you, 50 years old, need Diabetes II medication, because you were a couch potato already as a child.
Third, the mindset especially in the U.S. is that everyone at anytime has to work hard, work hard, work hard, but everything should be easy, easy and easy. Coming in sick? That's something which should be outright banned. But instead, you get told that you should just take a pill. And of course, "Big Pharma" will sell you the pill. But they are not the ones asking you to take the pill in the first place. Can't get sleep? Just take a pill. Fail to concentrate? Just take a pill. And walking around? Take the car or the golf cart. Especially the golf cart is a symbol of the main problem in the U.S., avoiding exercise at all cost, while at the same time appear busy. But no one blames "Big Golf Cart". The U.S. has unwalkable cities, and using the bicycle to get from A to B is outright dangerous. But you chastise the people for not exercising enough. The barbells are a prosthetic for a world which does not offer enough natural necessities to exercise.
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not the FDA approved garbage you guys seem to have.
I'd post AC too if I was going to write something that stupid.
Re: Wow (Score:3)
There's a simple difference between a farm tractor and a blood pump used during open heart surgery. When a tractor fails, the pasture doesn't die, when a blood pump fails during open heart surgery.
John Deere doesn't face lawsuits if a tractor fails, when a life-saving medical device fails, the mfg will be sued.
Perhaps having random hospital workers that attended a 'certification class' is a liability risk the manufacturer doesn't want to deal with?
This isn't a diagnostic device, this thing keeps your blood
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The hospital worker, the doctors, the nurses, they are all responsible for the care of the patient, and if they make a serious error which results in death the hospital can deal with it locally through their normal processes.
If they are tied into a service contract then they are *MORE* likely to sue the manufacturer because it's now firmly in their hands.
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We're not talking about a farmer trying to fix the blood pump with baling wire here.
How exactly are trained, certified experts working for you worse than trained, certified experts who are paid by the manufacturer?
Th liability theory makes no sense. If the hospital sends a "random person" who happens to be an idiot to training, and not, for some bizarre reason, the qualified maintenance person they definitely already have on staff who maintains the dozens of other similarly critical machines, then the idio
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I don't know the situation with this particular machine, but in John Deere's defense it's the only way they could get their 'Precision Agriculture' system to work reliably. It's a valuable (and expensive) system that has real benefits, but it was fairly delicate. Something would break, since farmers are always short on time and money they'd duct tape something in its place. Now things don't work correctly and Precision Agriculture takes the blame for failing. If they wanted the system to work well enoug
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Looks like it's time to introduce legislation not only giving an absolute, non negotiable, right to repair anything you've bought but also explicitly forbidding any sort of vendor lock in whatsoever.
Ah, sorry, my bad... this is America. The congresscritters, or family members, are undoubtedly on the boards of these companies and are no doubt either getting kickbacks or "campaign contributions". So the chance of getting anything quite so democratic, and sensible, passed would be nil. Obviously it's a comm
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https://x.com/TheBabylonBee/st... [x.com]
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There are two parts to a bribe: the money offered, and the services required in return. We know the first part, we can only divine the second.
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Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd make it simple: If you do not sell parts for the device, if you disallow 3rd parties from providing parts, if you don't allow training and such, then you are obligated to provide the repair service for free.
I mean, not providing training is one thing, you can always get the equivalent of Haynes doing a tear down and building their own manual/repair guide.
Parts might be a bit more difficult.
There's generally enough vehicles on the road and enough parts commonality to justify 3rd party manufacturing of parts, but for something like a heart machine, there might only be a couple hundred in the world.
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Don't worry, after the first lawsuit or two from not having technicians and parts available NOW at the hospital and I bet the the manufacturers lawyers are gonna tell em to go back to the old way or find new legal representation.
Legal contracts for guaranteed uptimes, or repair windows are more and more brutal the higher up the "this shit is literally keeping people alive" ladder you go. No, Dell's "24 hour repair or replace" isn't going to cut it, the hospitals will demand sub hour turnarounds. Or if they
and they can just say the hospital techs must take (Score:2)
and they can just say the hospital techs must take classes and pay us for any parts.
We can add all of the to our next bill.
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That was the old paradigm.
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"after the first lawsuit or two from not having technicians and parts available NOW at the hospital and I bet the the manufacturers lawyers are gonna tell em to go back to the old way or find new legal representation."
I am not sure why you think their would be any case. Surely it's the hospital's fault if they don't have a spare machine? Logistics aren't the manufacturer's fault at all. Keeping the hospital running is the hospital's business not the manufacturer's.
The manufacturer will have service framewor
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Need the machine: If they want to save the patient's life, they kind of have to. This particular machine keeps the patient's blood flowing and oxygenated, not clotting*, while the heart is disabled during surgery. It's basically an artificial heart located outside of the body.
Normally, competition would be a solution to this, but there's only a handful of companies making this sort of stuff, at least partially because of the research involved, but largely because you need to get FDA certification, and th
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No the franchise owners got the right to repair. The McDonald's corporation stood in the way for decades allowing one company a monopoly status on the machines as it was easier to deal with them than all of the franchise owners.
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The issue here is more complicated than a soft serve machine or a right to repair legislation. Hospital devices rely on vendors certifying them for operation and unlike a McFlurry which no one gives a shit about if it is repaired by someone else, the medical industry will have a whole host of processes in place to audit accreditation of staff and devices they use.
Even in a right to repair world this issue can crop up.
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Yes, but in this case it's a bit different.
When The McFlurry machine breaks down, you don't get your ice cream.
When the Heart Lung machine breaks down, you die.
Since you're now dead, your next of kin has hired their ambulance chasing lawyer to find out who gets to pay them for the compensation they deserve, and It's going to be a bit hard for for the Heart Lung machine manufacturer to prove that the machine failed because Jon Doe in the maintenance dept at General Hospital torqued a retaining screw 5 pounds
Right to repair is dead (Score:4, Informative)
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Trump has no stated position on R2R.
The states that have passed R2R are Massachusetts, Colorado, New York, Minnesota, Maine and California.
All are blue states (voted for Harris).
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In full honesty, I think all it would take would be for Fox News to point out that it's associated with blue states. And maybe that it "stifles American innovation at John Deere".
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Face it if you voted for Trump you fucked up. You're not going to get Mass deportations, you're not going to get lower grocery prices or lower gas prices, You're not
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You're not going to get Mass deportations, you're not going to get lower grocery prices or lower gas prices,
I'm married to an immigrant, I grow my own food, and I have an EV.
So, I'm good.
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but the reason we wont is because of a traitorous bureaucracy that stands in the way of our elected leaders implementing policy.
Ah, the deep state. The running excuse for party of Trump incompetence since 2016. It's great because it's such a nebulous claim it can be applied to anything. Were the bathrooms at the White House not cleaned well enough before Trump came in? "*Gasp* deep state"!
I should get my own deep state, seems way better than taking accountability for what I do or don't do.
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You must of missed the part where #resistence was a thing and people were proud of openly defying the elected president. You must be missing the new now where Dick Durbin is out there suggesting they do it again!
That is why Waltz is cleaning house. It is sad good people doing actual work are going to get swept up and tossed, because 8 years ago a bunch of scum bags, could not respect democracy. This aint the Trump 1.0 admin skam! Lessons have been learned.
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Sure, I remember that. What I don't remember is any tangible evidence anything like this has done anything to slow Trump down that wasn't part of people's jobs. Plus it's not like there weren't ample conservatives serving in our bureaucracy under Biden, Obama, or any other Democratic president but you don't hear Democrats scape goating them for their own poor policies. Nor did you ever hear it from Bush Jr even when Democrats were sore about the Florida vote count.
It makes a fantastic boogyman too as it's s
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Trump has no stated position on R2R.
Right to repair is good for consumers and not good for businesses. Trumps position on *all* such matters is perfectly clear. Now shut-up and sit down commoner, don't even dare to comment about the priorities of the government unless you're in the Forbes 50 list.
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Because to state it, he'd have to properly string together a few sentences and at least pretend to know what he's talking about. Remember when he tried to make "cyber" a noun [youtube.com]?
Bu we know who has deeper pockets in this fight, so that'll pretty much determine where he'll come down.
Terms of Sale (Score:5, Insightful)
One doesn't purchase machines that cost 6 figures without the maintenance and training services as a part of that contract. So, Terumo Cardiovascular is renegotiating the terms? Fine. I hope they have their checkbook out.
The machine is highly reliable (Score:4, Insightful)
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All of medtech has hard "expiry date". At the very least, accounts for mechanical/etc wear. Device may not be deployed after the expiry date.
If it were only to prop up the sales, the manuf could have simply shortened the "expiration" of their devices. They could have even installed some cheaper non-critical elements to justify the shorter life cycle.
I'd guess they done that already, but now want to extract even more from system.
The machine that goes "Ping!" (Score:5, Funny)
Is it the machine that goes "Ping!"? I bet it is.
Re:The machine that goes "Ping!" (Score:5, Funny)
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A lease? (Score:2)
Think this needs to just shift to becoming a service.
Never heard of 'device as a service'. Probably a reason for that. If the customer is paying for a service then you're responsible for dealing with the device.
Of course then the company would need to immediately replace them, like by already having backups nearby anywhere units are rented.
Then it'd make more sense to have the people using the hardware be employees of that company too. Where did our guilds go?
Oh, right... centralizing power lets people m
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Never heard of 'device as a service'.
If you've never heard of equipment leasing, you probably don't have anything of value to add to this discussion.
leased / vendor hardware stuck on older windows ve (Score:2)
leased / vendor hardware stuck on older windows versions with IT locked out of installing updates happens in hospitals as well.
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There's a real reason for that. Apply an update and you may brick a multi-million dollar machine. MRI machines and the like have drivers that need to touch the hardware in a very specific way. Since hardware is advancing so rapidly and installations are generally custom it's impossible to maintain drivers for the myriad variables.
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But in that case a general purpose OS like windows is a very poor choice, because it has a huge amount of functionality you simply don't need, but yet can still contain bugs causing instability or security holes.
A proper embedded OS, containing only functionality relevant for the task at hand is far more sensible for this kind of equipment.
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Sure, I agree completely, but then:
1) The manufacturer has to be competent to know who would be competent to write an embedded OS
2) The manufacturer has to hire that embedded OS programming staff
3) The manufacturer has to keep that embedded OS staff happy through the life of the product
4) The manufacturer has to hire staff competent to both work with a custom OS and to build a usable interface
5) The manufacturer has to train customers in how to use that interface
6) The customer has to maintain that staff tr
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In our case, the equipment is millions or tens of millions each. The customers purchase them as capital. Leasing is very rare. Normally a negotiated service contract will go along with new equipment, understandable because even a 250k/yr service contract is relatively small price to pay to ensure your expensive tools get started up correctly and stay running well. Customers will either keep the service contract long-term, o
Nothing new here (Score:2)
Two other possibilities (Score:2)
1. Terumo's machines are highly reliable and easy to fix. Awesome. But that has other effects that aren't so great. It means they don't sell very many of them, and training classes just don't bring in a lot of revenue. Great for the customers, unless the company is running so lean that they're facing bankruptcy. If that's the case, they need to charge the customers more through maintenance co
There's another, more likely, possibility (Score:3)
Their lawyers and/or insurance company may have told them to stop the practice. The medical industry is VERY heavily impacted by the money-grubbing legal profession ("If you or anyone you know has ever...call the offices of ... and we can get you MONEY!") and it's VERY possible that the company has been advised by lawyers, or has had DEMANDS from their insurers, to stop allowing anybody but their own staff to repair these systems. I'm not in the medical industry, and I do not have any info on this particula
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It could be this, or it could the related but slightly different point that running an external training program that leads to certification for this med device is just too expensive as a proposition, and they need to find a way to turn a centre into a profit centre. (The related part is that it's the need for the training to support certification, which provides the evidence they need in case of law suits, that will be drive the costs)
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If you are the sole provider of maintenance then your liability and risk of being sued will actually increase.
If there is a high chance the hospital's local staff fucked up and failed to maintain the machine properly the manufacturer probably won't be sued, or the case would fail anyway. The hospital may get sued in this case, or may deal with the situation themselves internally.
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Another possibility is that hospital technicians aren't always doing the service correctly
The hospital technicians were trained by the same people who will have to train the company technicians. Why would the company technicians be less likely to screw up?
This is clearly a business model decision. They can make more money with repair contracts.
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Why would the company technicians be less likely to screw up?
Because the company technicians work on the machines all the time....the hospital technicians work on the machines every once-in-a-while.
sorry, it's not so clear (Score:2)
If the manufacturer trains other people, but has no control of them and does not supervise them, it has an even bigger liability and it becomes more easy for lawyers to convince juries of "reckless disregard". I can imagine a lawyer for a family the lost somebody on the operating table, and who is suing all involved parties, telling a jury that the manufacturer of this system was a reckless money-grabber who increased their revenue by charging money to train hospital techs, then saved money by not supplying
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The hospital technicians have attended the same classes and received the same certification that the manufacturer's technicians would. The chance of the work not being done properly is the same either way.
The difference is that the hospital technicians are employed by the hospital, so the hospital has control over them and they're available when needed instead of having to go on a wait list, or wait for them to travel in from somewhere else.
Is this bad? or is it click bait? (Score:1)
Does anyone here actually understand FDA compliance and responsibility for medical devices?
Discontinuing a training program greatly reduces their AND the hospitals liability.
I am honestly surprised the FDA even allowed a training certification for a life safety device.
Just because a company stops doing something does not mean they have malicious intent. Maybe they are going to start including maintenance in the cost of the device instead of charging people? Or maybe they are going to displace the cost of th
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Agree. This is a really stupid thing for people to be conflating with right-to-repair.
Also do you really want Jane-Sue or Jim-Bob the hospital maintenance person messing with a machine that is literally keeping you alive during surgery, or would you prefer the company that made it, and designed it and literally only supports that machine is making sure its running properly?
Hell no I wouldn't....I'd want to know that thing was factory maintained by people who are intimately familiar with it. Not someone who did a remote study course.
But, if people have a problem with this, I highly encourage them to boycott its use during their next open heart surgery.
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It might help if you knew if the scope of screw turning we're talking about here.
Many screws don't care who turns them.
Max downtime guarantees? (Score:3)
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But they also need to have sufficient numbers of technicians, and sufficient geographic coverage in order to meet the service guarantees. This becomes expensive, especially for hospitals located in sparsely populated and remote areas.
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That isn't the issue, and most definitely will already be covered under the contract. The issue is the cost being 10x more expensive without a 10x improvement in service (before even discussing if an improvement is needed).
Healthy competition... (Score:1)
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Do you really want a device built by the lowest bidder and maintained by the same guy who fixes the HVAC to replace your heart and lungs during surgery? That's a level of Libertardianism that seems a bit excessive.
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The world market for a system like that would be a few dozen machines per year, maybe a couple hundred if it's something that's a major improvement over existing products. There's not going to be much competition, "healthy" or otherwise, in a market like that.
It'll drive up the price of healthcare.... (Score:2)
If the hospitals want to maintain their astronomical profit margins
Need a Right to Repain anything you own. (Score:3)
No more of this farm bull crap. If I buy a physical object, I should be able to do anything I want to it - break, repair it, turn it into art, etc.
They do not own the items I buy, I own them. That is what BUY means.
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No more of this farm bull crap. If I buy a physical object, I should be able to do anything I want to it - break, repair it, turn it into art, etc.
They do not own the items I buy, I own them. That is what BUY means.
The hospitals are free to do whatever they'd like with their heart-lung machines. Their patients are also free to sue them if/when harmed by a device maintained by an uncertified tech.
WWLRD? (Score:2)
What Would Louis Rossmann Do?
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Something stupid, and irreversible.
so done (Score:1, Insightful)
it's time for capitalism to die, this is too retarded. Fuck jails too, it's time to deal with the problem the civilized way, beheadings in the public square for message-sending purposes. The tards need to be told a few times.
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what nonsense, such miraculous machines only exist because of capitalism
Well, the heart-lung machine was actually originally invented by Dr. John Gibbon to save patients lives, not so much because of capitalism. After its invention, capitalists did run with it for profit purposes, but it certainly would have existed without them. That's the way the system works though. Academics or professionals do the research and develop the ideas, then the capitalists profit from them. You can argue that, without the capitalists, such devices would just stay academic curiosities, but there's
"I'm sorry sir." (Score:2)
"I simply can't offer you a Blood McFlurry today; our machine's down."
screw ethics! (Score:1)
I would tell this company to go pound sand and look for an alternative.
Unfortunately, the hospitals don't care how much this is going to cost the patient, they will keep the machines and pass the cost (and more) to the patient.
No demand for repair (Score:2)
The summary says that the company could not afford to keep the training and certification program going, because the hospitals were not sending enough technicians. So in the future, everyone will have to get the company's techs instead.
Not clear how this drives up the costs.
Sounds like you have to pay, one way or another,
and hospitals did not want to pay for the training.
Perhaps they could not even hire any technicians
to even go get trained. So now they will pay directly.
Is that more expensive than keeping
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Time for a lawsuit (Score:2)
Sounds like the hospitals should sue the company for failing to continue the service that was agreed to when they purchased the machines.
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Or the next time the hospital gets sued for a procedure using the machine, the manufacturer gets included in the lawsuit, with no possibility of blaming the hospital for bad maintenance.
If they're responsible for the machine, they're responsible for the machine.
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Survival instinct? (Score:2)
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.
Yet another unbounded CEO business genius with an 'innovative business model' that will soon be hiring a presidential grade bodyguard detail. It is amazing how greed manages to complete deactivate these people's survival instinct.
Open source & repairable, nothing else. (Score:2)
Mission-critical software open source, mission-critical devices repairable with spare parts available from multiple sources. Everything else is asking for trouble.
Point in case for machinery: I own a second-hand 500ccm scooter from 2017. The critical gauges are mechanical and it has a steel frame. The newest model is stuffed to the brim with electronics and excess gadgets and has a printed plastic frame. And costs as much as a small car. ... I'm going to drive my model until it falls apart. And then I'm goi
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