Developing a robust approach to Replacement Planning

York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

A Case Study

The challenge

As part of a plan to replace and finance equipment, the Trust’s Capital Planning group requested 5-year replacement plans for each department. This highlighted some significant gaps in data. The Trust largely understood the equipment they had, but no robust approach to assessing whole-life cost nor the base cost data (original cost, lease costs, maintenance cost) to inform this. The Trust also had no standardised approach for assessing risk and deciding on replacement priorities.

Approach
The Trust retained us to deliver our Replacement Planning service. This service, supported by a bespoke online system, aims to map the equipment base, the associated costs, replacement requirements and replacement costs, alongside a risk matrix to help determine replacement priorities.

Working with teams across the Trust, we:
Engaged with various stakeholders to gather the data such as end users, department heads, medical engineering, finance and procurement staff.

Collected key datasets, including original purchase dates and costs, financing methods and costs, depreciation periods and maintenance costs among others.

Used our market data and experience to, against each asset, establish indicative options for maintainable life and life expectancy, potential decontamination and return costs and secondary market values to determine if resale of the asset would be appropriate and when.

Populated our online replacement planning system with all the relevant data.

Presented that information back to the various stakeholders at the first in a series of regular, quarterly review meetings.

Outcomes

The systems, data and our support are transforming the Trust’s approach to replacement planning.

The Trust now has:
Complete oversight across the organisation of all existing costs associated with all Radiology and Theatre equipment in one central easy to access and useable location.

Data presented in a way that will allow quick and easier decision making as well as the identification of savings opportunities.

Access to market information regarding alternative maintenance options or different funding methods which will inform business cases.

Ability to forecast whole-life replacement costs, taking account of all the current market costs associated with equipment and its optimum replacement cycles.

An established risk matrix to support the prioritisation of replacement equipment.

Access to continued support to ensure the data is continually updated to support decision making and reflect changes to priorities.

Ability to identify best value and priority replacements.

Ability to make quick but informed decisions when circumstances inevitably change.

“We have experienced great difficulty in coordinating equipment replacement plans within the various medical specialties. With the National backdrop of limited funds available, we need to be sure we are maximising equipment life, but also replacing equipment in the right order to ensure patient safety and service delivery. The Lifecycle equipment replacement planning service will enable us to achieve this plan, by providing metrics in an easy to understand format which can be provided to clinic”

Ed Pearson

Technical Accountant, Financial Services

York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Can we help?

If you’d like to discuss how we can help you improve the procurement and whole-life management of your contracts call Jonathan Elsmore-Wickens, on 07979 495986, or complete the form and we will get in touch.