An adaptation of Pareto's parametric distribution as a support tool for the analysis of maintenance costs of biomedical equipment

Since the management and maintenance of biomedical equipment constitute a considerable economic commitment for the hospitals, the purpose of the current work is to provide an effective mathematical-statistical tool, based on the parametric distribution of Vilfredo Pareto, allowing both a rapid analysis and optimization of costs. Pareto's principle states that about 20% of the causes produces 80% of the effects and the goal, in this study, is to determine the minority group of biomedical equipment that has the greatest impact on hospital costs, allowing the implementation of a strategy for the rationalization of economic resources. Pareto's analysis is applied to three different case studies: firstly, to the purchase values of all the biomedical equipment; secondly, to the purchase values of the technologies resulting from eliminating the clinical department with major economic impact; and, finally, to the maintenance costs of the biomedical equipment in both cases. Real data, from the Clinical Engineering Service of the University Hospital Campus Bio-Medico have been utilized. Results indicate that a small number of biomedical equipment (between 7% and 13% of the total) require 80% of the annual overall maintenance cost, and consequently, concentrating the cost optimization policy exclusively on this small fraction of technologies it is possible to obtain considerable economic savings.