BD Alaris

I am the Biomedical Equipment Technician in a small hospital in rural New Mexico and medical equipment is at a premium here. We need all our equipment up and in the hands of the talented medical staff in as little time as possible.

Case in point: A number of our BD Alaris IV Pump Modules, model 8100 are failing preventive maintenance inspections due to patient side occlusion pressures being out of tolerance.

The computer program used to perform the PMI's is failing these pumps because of that issue. At this point I have 20% of my pump modules down and in need of a Pressure Calibration Set to calibrate and put them back in service. According to BD Alaris these calibrated sets have been on back order for almost one year.

BD Alaris' has no work-around for this issue and they have no idea when these items will become available again. They also state that their machine they use to manufacture these items is broken.

This is a ludicrous excuse. A major world-wide manufacturer of high-end medical equipment can't fix their equipment or get it fixed? In addition, they only have ONE machine? They're BS-ing me!

Their suggestions were...

One: swap the two pressure sensors around. I did that. No fix. Two: Replace both sensors....

I did that. No fix. Three: replace the main logic board. This is an expensive item and I'll need quite a few of them.

Each of these items cost significantly more money than a $36.00 calibration set.

What I would like to do is to light a fire under BD Alaris and get these Calibrated Pressure Sets back in stock and out to the customers ASAP. I'm positive we aren't the only medical facility experiencing this issue.