One of the biggest issues facing medical facilities is the cost of purchasing, maintaining, and operation much needed medical equipment. Linear accelerators can cost anywhere between three to four million dollars to purchase. When budgeting for such large scale equipment, facilities should consider that maintenance on a linear accelerator can average approximately half a million dollars each year. This figure does not include any of the expense in regards to personal involved in operations.
Medical facilities, especially cancer facilities need to be equipped with state of the art, reliable equipment in order to achieve a high level of patient care. As medical linear accelerators start to age the machines reliability starts to decrease and errors increase. The average lifetime of a machine like a linear accelerator or CT scanner is between five to ten years. Medical machinery errors can often be detoured by upgrades in software or by replacing parts with parts that have been refurbished that bring machine back to its original state.
Many companies that offer linear accelerators for sale also offer maintenance contractors or are affiliated with refurbished linear accelerator part distributors. There are several levels of support that facilities can choose from. So many medical facilities are facing budget constraints that they are often left choosing between updates on machine software, operating manuals or continued training for machine operators and physicists. All of which is above and beyond the initial expense and regular maintenance of the machine itself.
Another dilemma that plagues medical facilities needing large pieces of medical equipment to diagnosis and treat patients is the pressure of production. Each piece of machinery is expected to pay for itself overtime its lifetime. The pressure is even more present when used in a profit generating facility verse a non-profit medical facility.
The demands of patient care and quality, error free treatment also plagues medical facilities operation large equipment like CT scanners and linear accelerators. When treating illnesses such as cancer it is crucial that treatment follows a certain schedule. Most cancer patients are experiencing enough disruption in life that the last thing they need is scheduling conflicts because of issues pertaining to medical equipment.
Radparts is the world’s largest independent distributor of OEM replacement parts for Linear Accelerators and Radiation Oncology equipment. The mission is to provide high quality, user friendly, low cost parts support for linear accelerators and radiation equipment. For more information on low cost parts for repairing Linac equipment find us at http://www.radparts.com.
