How to make the right decisions regarding third-party repair companies

With little to no standards governing third-party repair companies, it is important to thoroughly evaluate your repair vendor to ensure patient safety and enforce bottom-line savings. Seek a repair vendor with ISO certification (International Organization for Standardization), specifically ISO 9001:2000, which is most pertinent to the endoscope repair industry. ISO certification requires a substantial investment on the part of the repair vendor and establishes that the highest quality assurance levels will be met. Request to see the company’s certification and manual of procedures. Additional certifications such as ISO 13485:2003 (medical devices) and ASQ CQI (American Society for Quality, Certified Quality Inspector Certification) as implemented by Spectrum Surgical Instruments, further verifies that the quality requirements of the customer are being met. Your vendor should also maintain a full inventory of new parts. This allows the service provider to perform major as well as minor repairs, resulting in quicker turnaround time, and reduced frequency of repairs — ultimately reducing costs.

When partnering with an endoscope repair vendor it is important to find out if the third-party company is conducting the repairs themselves or are they merely a middleman? With hundreds of third-party endoscope repair companies in the industry, many smaller companies will broker repairs to a larger company, resulting in multiple mark-ups, inconsistencies in quality, turnaround time, cost, accountability, and in a worst-case scenario — liability. If time and travel is possible, schedule a site visit with the vendor to tour their repair facility. This will shed a lot of light on the service company and will allow you to quickly see for yourself, face-to-face, if a company makes the grade.

A vendor should be able to provide CE-approved educational programs at no charge to you. While often overlooked, educational programs are one of the most effective ways to reduce endoscope repair costs. Combining education and training on the repair process helps to drive down the cost of surgical instrument repairs. By teaching the clinical and sterile processing departments on preventative maintenance techniques (including leak-testing certification) minor repairs are discovered before they become major. A repair vendor should teach key instrument inspection points, inspection techniques, proper cleaning and handling and the proper use of brushes. This education can further reduce liability on the facility by improving cleaning and infection control procedures.

It is important to implement a no-charge, on-location preventative maintenance program to diagnose minor repairs before they become major repairs. Your repair vendor should thoroughly evaluate the condition of your current endoscope inventory, identifying potential problem areas. They should record each make, model, and serial number. Recommendations should come in the form of a detailed report to the customer, documenting potential issues, no issues present, or severe issues with immediate need for removal from service and repair. This should be completed quarterly with documentation.

If it is not documented then it did not happen. The third-party repair vendor should provide full-service reports documenting specific repairs performed and recommendations for future service. Reporting should be provided by the vendor on a monthly or quarterly basis and reflect a complete history of repairs, which is important to identify repair trends and potential "lemons" in need of replacement. This also allows you to hold the service provider accountable by tracking repair costs to a specific scope. An example of an easy-to-use reporting and tracking system is Spectrum’s new Repair-Tracker, which provides confidential, real-time, Internet-based tracking of endoscope repair status, repair progress and history.

The most commonly used scopes should be available as loaners at no cost. While a large inventory of loaners is appreciated, note however that if a vendor were to have all models of scopes available, this would drastically increase the cost to the end-user. It is also important for the vendor to be able to provide certified pre-owned endoscopes at a cost savings. For example, if a service is getting busy and dollars are not available to purchase a replacement scope under capital budget, the repair vendor should be able to provide a certified pre-owned scope as a repair/exchange.

Unfortunately many third-party repair vendors are small, often one-man operations, running out of a home office, garage or basement, and that simply cannot afford liability insurance. Always ask for to see a documented, updated certificate of liability insurance that meets coverage requirements. Liability-in-Transit insurance should also be included. If a vendor cannot provide adequate liability insurance, select another repair vendor.

Negotiate a win/win. Evaluate your service contract and negotiate fees or rate of repairs. If a service contract is put into place, it is important to stay in communication with the service provider to continually monitor the service contract and ensure that a good value is received. Lowest price should not always win — negotiate your contract down, or renegotiate all together. It is also important to identify similar repair costs and pricing levels. Where one vendor may provide pricing levels, another may provide individual repair costs. Ideally, a "per-repair" pricing structure will yield the biggest savings. Find out if there a cap on the number of scopes that can be sent out under a flat-fee service agreement, and if so, what if that number is exceeded? Additionally, find out if there are any exceptions to the contract.

Always partner with a reputable repair company. Do not hesitate to ask for, and contact references. Also find out if they have a track record within your health system. Schedule a site visit to meet the team and technicians. The visit will teach you a lot.