Dimensions Relevant forMaintenance Performance inTechnical Healthcare Settings

Sammanfattning: Abstract Access to qualitative, affordable, and appropriate medical equipment is essential to advance universal health coverage, address health emergencies, and promote healthier populations. In order to keep the equipment safe and ready to use maintenance is needed. The maintenance strategies for equipment in healthcare are often based mainly on reliability characteristics, but the equipment is not only dependent on software and hardware. The user using the equipment has a significant impact, and on top of that lies the various variables around the equipment and the growing complexity of the healthcare sector. Human interactions with medical equipment are nowadays a relatively explored subject, but the impact this has on the maintenance performance is still an uncharted area. This study answers the question “What dimensions are relevant for maintenance performance in a technical healthcare setting?” In order to answer the question, three main steps were taken: 1) Conduct a structured literature study based on previous research of maintenance strategies, organizational behaviour and healthcare settings; 2) Gather a case collection in collaboration with specialists at a medical technology company; and 3) Assess the dimensions found in the literature study by evaluating them with aspect to the cases in the case collection.To reach the final result – a list of relevant dimensions – some partial results were needed; conclusions, dimensions, list of situations, and a final case collection. The methodology was developed to deliver dimensions and cases which would be used in the evaluation. To receive the dimensions, a structured literature study was done, this resulted in conclusions which the sought dimensions were extracted from. To obtain the cases, interviews at a medical technology company were done, this resulted in a list of situations. From these situations the final cases were selected. The evaluation was then done by assigning each dimension a score between zero and five according to the relevance it showed in the different cases. Finally, a list of relevant dimensions was uncovered. The final results exposed not only the dimensions relevant for maintenance performance in technical healthcare settings but also how relevant each dimension was in relation to each other. The degree of relevance could also be seen with aspect to each individual case. In total 17 dimensions were evaluated thought six cases. The top five dimensions with the highest score turned out to be 1) “Leadership within the service organization”, 2) “Infrastructure supporting collaboration”, 3) “Openness to discuss performance weaknesses”, 4) “High level of communication”, and 5) “Information flow”. These results can be used to obtain a better understanding of maintenance performance within the healthcare sector, to improve the accessibility of equipment, decrease costs within healthcare, and in the end ensure better provision of healthcare services. Keywords: maintenance performance, technical healthcare settings, medical equipment, evaluation