Research On Cost-Benefit Evaluation And Management Of Lab Equipment Procurement In The Second Affiliated Hospital Of University Of South China

With China’s continuous medical reform policy,modern medical bioengineering technology has been improving en developing immensely,so has the laboratory medicine.However,the aging population is growing at the same time,people rely more on laboratory medicine due to increasing chronic diseases.Therefore,more and more laboratory equipment and tests are available in the market.The medical device industry and medical laboratories have stepped into intelligent information era.For hospitals,it is always tough to balance the cost of importing new technology and the operation cost.There have also been conflicts between applying new technology and the amount of medical cost for patients and insurance.These difficulties have limited not only medical research on new technology,but also patients’ access to new technology.In order to improve current situation,it is important that hospitals optimize their hardware equipment in a sustainable way and make cost-benefit analysis of the same type existing equipment to determine whether it is feasible to obtain new ones.A cost-benefit assessment framework,which contains multiple cost-benefit indicators,is thus compulsory to carry out a feasibility analysis of obtaining new equipment.The assessing indicators from cost perspective mainly contains direct cost(e.g.depreciation cost,labor cost,material cost,maintenance cost and utilities cost)and indirect cost(e.g.equipment uptime).Buying and leasing(free but with conditions)are different models for procuring lab equipment.Nowadays,leasing is the most popular method,yet in a gray zone of current policy.To be more specific,it raises high risk of corruption,and damages patients’ interests due to unnecessary usage of equipment.This research is based on a case study of the procurement model of lab equipment in the Second Affiliated Hospital of University of South China.Literature review,data analysis and comparisons are made to analyze the operation revenue and expense derived from the hospital information system and lab information system.Several indicators are compared to analyze the economic benefits of current procuring model,including rate of return on investment,return period,break-even sales volume,difference between differential revenue and cost.Through analyzing cost-benefit indicators,based on both direct and indirect cost,it is suggested to optimize the management of lab equipment procurement by: 1)establishing an universal cost-benefit assessment framework of lab equipment;2)choosing proper procurement models;3)signing appropriate procurement contract;4)improving equipment information management;5)focusing more on training personnel.