ABSTRACT
A computerized hospital equipment utilization review system has been developed and implemented in a tertiary care utilization hospital in order to provide real-time equipment utilization with income information to be used in budgeting and strategic planning. Among various hospital fixed and clinical equipment, 283 (purchase price over US$15,000 per unit) were selected initially for utilization review. The application was written in Power Builder which was then loaded on Pentium client or on-line service. The data base management and statistical transactions were done by Oracle v 7.3.4 on NUMA Q2000 server. The utilization and associated income information of operating tables and other clinical equipment were automatically collected from physician order information in the hospital information system. Those information on other equipment which (lid not have direct utility information linked to physician order entry in the hospital information system were manually entered by users .Various utilization reports can be generated by users through computer menus; reports include name of equipment, using department, purchase price and year, frequency of use for inpatients and outpatients separately, income generated by such usage, and etc. The out put can also be generated by department, by instrument. by any interval as selected. The automated hospital equipment utilization review system has been developed and used since March, 2000 and is proven to he an essential tool for the hospital budget planners and managers. The outcome has been increasingly satisfactory.