Reliability Indicators in the Medical Equipment Management

This paper presents a study which uses reliability indicators for medical equipment management. There are considered corrective and preventive maintenance records to calculate the mean time between failures and the mean time to repair. The application of this method, the maintenance records collected refer to anesthesia equipments used in operating rooms of five health care facilities in the public network of Santa Catarina state, Brazil. The analysis of the indicators was made according brands and date of installation of anesthesia equipments. The mean time between failures of the equipment under analysis is acceptable and was 16 months for brand A and 10 months for brand B. However, it was not possible to conclude whether the periodicity of preventive maintenance performed is being effective or not for the containment of failures. It is concluded that the analysis of indicators if not describes the operational context of use and may lead to a finding of reliability of precipitated brands, not being trusted to reality.