Strategic Medical Equipment Incorporation Process: A Proposed Model to be used by the Lebanese Healthcare Organizations

Abstract

Background: The Improvement in healthcare as provided by new modern equipment is associated with the rise in healthcare cost. Lebanon’s economy and its public healthcare sector might be struggling with a crisis stimulated by the absence of any legal limit for the sophisticated medical equipment number per population density. Purpose: to assess the current methodology for health technology incorporation used by the Lebanese hospitals, and to propose an incorporation model guiding them in medical devices acquisition. Methodology: combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches were used in addition to a proposed incorporation models with an applied case study on it. Questionnaires were distributed among 34 hospitals, with a response rate of 82.35%, and interviews were conducted with five biomedical managers. Results: The study shows that only 7% of mangers know what Health Technology Assessment (HTA) means, and none of these hospitals use HTA reports. Additionally, 71% of hospitals don’t monitor their incorporation process and only 4% evaluate the purchased devices’ utilization. Based on the qualitative analysis, the lack of proper need assessment, market study, and poor supplier evaluation were the main reasons behind poor incorporation processes. Conclusion: We found that hospitals lack a proper incorporation process as evident in their poor methodology, hence recommendations were to follow a formalized process for medical device incorporation. However when it comes to the Ministry of Public Health, the recommendations were to formalize and apply new laws and regulations for the certificate of needs.