Over 90 Total Lots Up For Auction at One Location - WA 04/08

Keeping the cold heart of an MR beating for the long term

by Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | September 03, 2015
An Oxford Instruments
technician repairs MRI coils
From the September 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

The “whoosh” of a quenching magnet is perhaps the most chilling sound for an MR engineer to hear.
Quenching, the rapid evaporation or discharge of liquid helium that causes the magnetic field to collapse, is a catastrophic event for any hospital or imaging facility. And just as most hospitals wouldn’t send a cardiac patient to a neurosurgeon, they generally leave magnet maintenance and repair to the specialists. It’s something that hasn’t shifted, even as health care organizations increasingly bring service in-house.

Despite having a large in-house service organization that takes care of imaging equipment across seven states, Banner Health stops short of changing old magnets and replacing the coldheads on its MRI machines. “It’s too specialized to be able to do it frequently enough and get good at it,” says Steven Letourneau, senior director of imaging support services for Banner Health, which is headquartered in Arizona.

Randal Walker, vice president of CT and MR for BC Technical, compares a hospital replacing its own coldheads to bringing your car to a shop that does mostly oil changes to work on the brakes. “You might not do two within three years,” Walker says of coldhead replacement. “You lose the skill set.” The main drawback for Banner Health of having the work done outside is the cost — approximately $90,000 to replace 10 coldheads per year on a pay-as-you-go basis — but Letourneau says it’s better than buying a service contract, which would cover more than coldhead replacement on older equipment.

“Given the age of the equipment, we may replace it soon, so you don’t want to spend $200,000 a year on 10 MRs that two years from now are going to be gone,” Letourneau says. “What it boils down to is the price of a contract happens to be more expensive than my annual spend rate.”

Keeping an eye on the cold
Remote monitoring has emerged as another way to preserve the life of cryogen systems. Magnet monitoring can lower the helium bill, Walker says. BC Technical’s system, Cold- TRAC, cycles through every six seconds and looks at different variables, including helium levels, compressor power, chiller temperature and chiller water flow.

“If that gets outside of the area that is normal, it will alarm,” Walker says. Remote monitoring is a smart investment, says Ron Schultz, field service manager for Cool Pair Plus. The company’s remote monitoring starts at $200 to $300 per month and they offer two levels, from basic monitoring of the chiller and compressor to more comprehensive monitoring of magnet pressure, helium levels and temperatures.

You Must Be Logged In To Post A Comment