At Your Service

You cannot run a successful surgery center if your surgical instruments are dull, damaged or in desperate need of replacement. I work at an extremely busy orthopedic ASC with eight operating rooms that are full of cases from early morning until late afternoon, Monday through Friday. Surgeons perform about 30 procedures on a slow day, and more than 80 when we’re at our busiest. In order for our facility to run like a well-oiled machine, we need to make sure our surgeons always have the instruments they need.

That’s why a few years ago, we started to work with a third-party company that offers same-day, on-site instrument repair and service. Technicians arrive in a service van, retrieve clean instrument sets and take them to the van to perform minor repairs. The van pulls into our parking lot around 6:30 a.m. and a crew of two to three technicians work until about 2 p.m. During this time, they typically care for about 11 trays of instruments. 

When we initially partnered with the firm in 2020, we were giving them around 15 trays a month to work on. However, this year we noticed that some of our instruments needed to be sharpened more often and serviced more frequently. For instance, the mallets that we use during total hip operations get damaged fairly frequently. So now we have agreed upon a twice-a-month schedule with the service company and we give them about 11 trays to work on every two weeks.

The company provides capped pricing — one agreed upon fee per visit — and we have a contracted amount we spend per month. Each visit includes routine upkeep such as alignments, adjustments, sharpening, screw and spring replacements, lubrication and ultrasonic cleaning.

I had received a couple offers from instrument repair service companies, but heard about the one that we chose by word of mouth. One of my sterile processing techs had worked with them in the past, and highly recommended their team because they are reputable and transparent in terms of pricing and the services they offer. Our relationship for the last couple of years has been fantastic.

My recommendation is to find a firm that is upfront and honest and makes your facility a priority. I, along with our sterile processing staff, was able to tour the main facility of our service repair company, which I highly recommend. If they open their doors to you, they have nothing to hide. 

You want to work with a service repair team who is happy and upbeat about their work, because that often translates into successful production. I’m a very hands-on person, and I think it’s important to take the time to get to know the techs and their process. I routinely text members of the team and they always respond. We have a great relationship, which is extremely important. You need to be very transparent and let them know what you want and what you expect, and do not settle for less.

What I like about the firm that we are working with is after every visit, we receive an activity report. The report is extremely detailed and goes over all the major and minor repairs that they have done. The report also provides a detailed list of which instruments are due for service that’s based on a user-friendly color-coded system, which saves us time in trying to locate the trays we need to have ready. We can view the reports on the company’s website, where we have an account. I like that you can pull instrument service reports in a variety of different formats, such as graphs or pie charts.

If we ever need to send instruments off-site to be repaired, we can track those items in our account as well. When we order instrument care supplies such as sterile processing accessories through the company, I can easily track orders and keep up to date on what I have bought in the past.

The service van also carries an array of new instruments. If a tool cannot be repaired and is stocked on the van, we’re able to purchase a new one to complete the tray. It’s very convenient to have the option to purchase an instrument on the spot when one is unable to be fixed.