MEDICAL PRODUCTS MARKETING SERVICES

Methodology for Infusion Pump Audit

Since 1984, Medical Products Marketing Services (MPMS) has maintained a database of the inventory of electronic flow control devices in US hospitals. The panel is balanced by: geography and hospital bed size. Audit updates are conducted by interview with multiple hospital sources. Although there is a higher cost associated with this approach, healthcare professionals are used as phone interviewers because they have consistently demonstrated higher recruitment rates and greater accuracy in data collection.

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In this case, we collect data by 6 metrics:

01

Pump quantity

02

Month/year of installation

03

Installation type: New Placement, Replacement or Removal

04

One-to-one linkage of replacement information

05

Removal history, where applicable

06

Location/department and acquisition types are audited, but limited

Definitions

The definitions of count parameters and terms used in this report are:

PLACEMENTS

Increase in the installed pumps from additions to inventory.

INSTALLED BASE

Devices already installed and calibrated for use by the end of the reporting period are counted as the installed base.

REMOVALS

Devices removed from inventory and not replaced. A hospital’s inventory is directly reduced by removal of these items.

VALIDATION AND VERIFICATION

Several verification steps are routinely implemented. Hospitals that have shown inactivity over a 24-36 month period (older equipment) are targeted for multi-level calling. Hospital personnel (or census) device/bed ratios are compared to national averages to point out “outlier” hospitals for special follow-up. Some acute care hospitals are part of Health Systems with shared pumps and respond for more than one hospital in the system. Aggregated number of both installed base and period placement are checked for reasonableness with internal numbers for each company.

ADDITIONS

New placement of pumps that increase the installed base. These are newly acquired equipment that do not replace existing units.

REPLACEMENTS

Replacements are new devices that upgrade existing equipment, either replacing an item from the same manufacturer or switching to a competitor.

ACTIVITY

The key to market analysis is to analyze the activity within a period, which is defined as the impact on the installed base of the components listed above and to analyze the market segments (bed size and region) in which this activity took place.