Why has Equipment Planning become a major consulting service required in medical facility development?
The simple answer is technology and cost. Medical Equipment Planning was actually a recognized discipline and profession over 50 years ago, prior to the development of the extremely large majority of current technology. While it is sometimes hard to believe, technology such as pulse oximetry, electronic non-invasive blood pressure, CT, MRI, diagnostic ultrasound, Cath Labs, PET scanners, electronic medical records, audio/video integration, and even personal computers have only been on the scene since about 30 years ago. The problem is that for each one of these major technologies named above, there are hundreds of other items of capital equipment, some very costly such as: lasers, imaging guided surgery, harmonic scalpels, cyber knives, etc, that still are growing at an incredible rate. It is now possible for the cost of medical equipment to actually exceed the cost of construction and be the largest single capital expense on a healthcare project. In addition to being costly, much of t
