Analysis from a busy endoscope decontamination department has revealed an average of 98.67% operational ‘uptime’ for its five WASSENBURG WD440PT washerdisinfectors.
A further two units, installed at a satellite hospital, are running at 99.22% giving a combined ‘uptime’ efficiency of 98.9%. The study was carried out by Wassenburg UK’s engineering manager, Bryan Taylor. The endoscopy suite at Russells Hall in Dudley was chosen for the review as this represents a busy department with a large number of washers and dryers. Information from the hospital’s process manager database was analysed to generate the report. The department went ‘live’ on the 24 of October 2011 and has five 2010 WD440PT’s installed side-by-side in the GI unit. To calculate the ‘uptime’ for the washers, a six-month period was used running from 3 September 2012 to 3 March 2013. The department opens for processing endoscopes from 8 am to 7 pm, Monday to Friday and from 8 am to 2 pm on Saturdays. These hours were used to determine the department ‘available time’ for processing endoscopes. Corbett Hospital uses the same Process Manager database. The department here is open from 7am to 2pm Monday to Thursday. Again, these hours were used to determine the departments ‘available time’ for processing endoscopes. If a process failed or had been aborted, this was counted as a failed cycle and used to give a ratio of passed-to-failed cycles. Failures outside the control of the machine were removed from the calculations. Average ‘uptime’ for all five machines was 98.67%. Total number of cycles ran was 5,696. Average ‘uptime’ for both machines at Corbett Hall was 99.22%. The total number of cycles run was 1,535.
