West of Scotland NHS Trusts

Medical Physics Technical Management Group

The following are the minutes of the meeting held on the 2^nd February 2005 
 
 

Present Mr. J. Watson

            Mr. A Nixon

            Mr. W. Brash

            Mr. D. Sutton

            Mr. T. Hutchinson

Apologies Mr. T. Holmes

            Mr. A. Henry  
 
 
 

There will be an extraordinary meeting at Royal Alexandra Hospital on the 22^nd February at 12.30 pm  
 

The agenga for the meeting following this is as follows 
 
 

      Apologies  
 

      Matters Arising 
 

      Benchmarking  
 

      Incidents 
 

      AOCB

1.  Electrical Safety Testing Website 
 

      Mr. Watson has contacted Mark Tulley re the website who has put him in contact with Adam Taktak and Malcolm Brown of the IPEM special interest group. Mr. Brash has already sent details of the site to Dr Taktak in response to a questionnaire but has had no reply. Mr. Watson will contact him to pursue. Mr. Brash will provide a zipped copy of the website.  
 

                                                      BB, JW 
 

2. Pay Review Strategy – Agenda for Change 
 

      No job descriptions have yet been submitted by group members. It was decided to have an extraordinary meeting to compare these and to discuss further.   
 

3. Software trial 
 

      Funding had been made available to initiate replacement of MESMIS within Glasgow, however was thought to be inadequate to cover both software and hardware costs. In addition, this had to be spent before end March, and probably precluded the bespoke solution. Pending decision

                                                DS 
 

4.  Benchmarking 
 

      Mr. Hutchison was concerned about consumable expenditure and suggested producing a pie chart to indicate proportions of expenditure for various purchase categories. He will come up with a precise definition of consumables and the group agreed to reply.   
 

Mr. Watson was particularly concerned over the Baxter colleague infusion pump reliability. Indications were that it was significantly more troublesome than the competitors. This was discussed at length and conceded by all. Mr. Brash produced figures indicating the Colleague produced 1.4 unplanned jobs per pump per year, against 0.7 for the competitors, however overall costs were considerably lower. Not to be fobbed off, Mr. Watson wanted comparative figures from other users of number of pumps, costs and number of jobs and Mr. Brash & Mr. Hutchison agreed.    
 

Mr. Brash demonstrated pivot tables in Excel to provide the data, and suggested a date range of 1/1/04 - 31/12/04 for this. Data by all for next normal meeting   

      TH, JW, BB, All

5.  Physicist Group

It was felt by all that we should have closer ties with the Technical Managers group. Mr. Brash had been in contact with Mr. Nieman of the group regarding infusion pump reliability  benchmarking and suggested the MPTMG group should contribute to the supplied data which did not include most of the represented areas. Mr. Brash will circulate the data so far, and will collate the responses.

                                                            BB 
 

6. Expansion of group

It was suggested that we expand the group to include Alan Henry from Forth Valley. He was invited to this meeting but did not attend. Further expansion to be decided later. 
 

7. E-procurement BPI

Mr. Sutton reported that Proact medical were undercutting by Ł5 the Tyco offer price for Nellcor sensors offered in response to  Septembers BPI meeting. This led to some discussion where it was agreed we should have earlier and more technical input. Both Mr. Hutchison and Mr. Sutton had contacted the BPI project team to this end but had no response.  Group to monitor and pursue to raise profile.          All 
 

8. Endoscope cleaners

Mr. sutton asked which of the group looked after endoscope cleaners since he had been approached to take on this responsibility. The group felt this was a minefield and was best avoided as being more in line with other sterilisation equipment such as autoclaves etc.Mr. Brash suggested that current guidance for these had changed in January this year (available from www.decontamination.nhsestates.gov.uk/introduction/index.asp)  
 

9. Eschman

Mr. Hutchison asked for an opinion on Eschman’s performance lately and the group agreed that support was poor and the equipment, although quite reliable, was getting outdated.   
 

Date of Next Meeting to be arranged at the extraordinary meeting on the 22^nd february