When service budgets are stretched and the requirement is always ‘more for less’, maintaining high levels of recycling is a key mitigation against cost increases. Saving money whilst maintaining the highest levels of service and quality is a key consideration for Medequip at an operational level.
With a stated commitment to the return, recycle and reuse principle, Medequip continues to achieve impressive levels of equipment recycling. In 2024 £183 million worth of equipment was collected back from people who had used it and 90% of this was cleaned, repaired and reused. Any equipment that cannot be reused is stripped of useable parts before the materials are sent to specialist recycling facilities.
Every piece of equipment issued has to be collected before it can be recycled and reused. At Medequip, we have an in-depth understanding of, and track record with, achieving, maintaining and increasing very high levels of collections. The fact that we recycle 90% of collected items demonstrates our continued commitment to optimising added value for our contracts.
So exactly how does Medequip achieve such good rates of safe and economical equipment reuse?
A recent visit by prescribers, OTs and commissioners to our Norfolk depot, one of our highest performing sites in terms of recycling percentages, highlighted the excellent systems and procedures in place to ensure every piece of equipment achieves the longest lifecycle possible, contributing towards providing best value for money for our contracts. Many of our visitors were surprised at how many items are quickly and effectively recycled for reuse.
Optimising equipment usage
Let’s take a look at how it all works, using a hospital bed as an example. This piece of equipment plays a vital role in facilitating hospital discharges for individual comfort and safety. It is an expensive piece of technical kit with a multitude of mechanical and electrical components requiring service and maintenance.
Each hospital bed will initially be delivered in new to a Medequip depot, where a visual inspection is carried out by our technicians before the bed goes into stores. From the stores, it will be called off, delivered and installed in a community setting, where it may be used for anything from a few days to a few years. (Any bed in use for longer periods of time will be subject to periodic maintenance checks in the home.)
The recycling process
When the bed is no longer required, it is collected by Medequip and brought back to the depot where it is thoroughly steam cleaned and decontaminated. It is then visually inspected and condition assessed.
The bed will then go to Medequip’s workshops, where all electrical and mechanical aspects are thoroughly assessed. Our in-house service engineers will check every operational aspect and carry out maintenance and repairs as necessary, as well as other regulatory procedures such as PAT testing. After a final quality check, the bed is returned to stores ready for reuse.
Medequip carries stocks of spares ranging from headboards and footboards through to castors and actuators to ensure beds can be serviced and repaired as quickly as possible then put back into service.
On some occasions, particularly with older models, beds may be deemed to be beyond reasonable repair. With a high value item like a hospital bed, Medequip contracts have different regulations in terms of when the scrappage decision is taken, but this will always require authorisation at a higher level before the bed is taken out of use. In Medequip’s East of England area, the average recycle rate for a hospital bed for the last 6 months is 91% of those collected.
What it all means in the real world
A typical hospital bed will have a community equipment life of up to ten years. During this period of time, our data shows that on average, it will be used by as many as ten people, playing a role in speeding up hospital discharges and in providing comfort for recovering patents at home as well as end of life care.
From the time a bed arrives back into a Medequip depot, it can take as little as two hours to clean, repair, service and return to stores, ready for reuse. This speed of turnaround saves money, ensures equipment is always ready for call off and contributes towards economy and efficiency.
For community equipment specialists like Medequip, getting the equipment back to the depot once it is no longer required, cleaned, repaired and ready for reuse is a critical aspect of our service. We are increasingly using digital processes to improve and speed up timeframes, such as automated telephony, seeking to implement the best systems and procedures to ensure we continuously enhance performance and optimise potential economies.