During last month’s webinar we hosted (click here to watch) about the steep fines hospitals are facing due to Medical Device credits and the confusion surrounding the status of warranties for certain devices an attendee posed the questions: Do you have to send every explanted device back? What if you read and interpret the warranty on your own?
This topic fired up our panel of experts and had me thinking what is the best practices way of handling an explanted device that may or may not be under warranty?
Christina Dawson, Materials Coordinator for Dignity Health St. Joseph Cath Lab, explained that the only time she doesn’t send a device back is in an end of life scenario. Al Brander, former CNO and OR director, agreed and said he sent back all devices and let the vendor decide the warranty status to avoid any risk. Colin Ramsey, Business Consultant, Cardiovascular Service Line for Sharp HealthCare agreed and said, “We started sending all devices back and we found a device that we had originally marked as no credit did have a credit. So, after that happened, we now send a hundred percent of all devices back.”
It seems that even the most well intention and researched warranties are difficult to understand due to the legal jargon used. Rather than spending your staff member’s time researching and reading the fine print according to this expert panel the best practice for explanted devices to avoid fines and penalties is to send all devices back to the vendor to ensure a proper credit or no credit is given.
If you want to skip ahead to this section of the recording you can find it at 34:30.