From the December 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


As the client, you may want to trade the system in, and task the OEM selling the new machine with the responsibility of removing the old machine. But more and more, the OEMs are farming out the responsibility of handling the deinstall to either third parties or the customer that purchased the machine from the OEM trade-in desk. More often than not, the successful bidder at the OEM trade-in desk will subcontract the deinstall to a third party, so as the client, you are back in the hot seat. You have the security of being able to lean on the OEM and maybe even receive compensation from the OEM, but that is a small consolation if, at the time, things are not going well.

Failure to plan is planning to fail
Smart money makes a plan for the deinstall in advance. Smart money considers all of the items I have listed above and maybe a few more and assigns someone to be in charge of each and every task. Doing this saves you embarrassment, frustration, delays and possibly even treating patients.

Once again, whether you are dealing with the OEM or a third party, or the man in the moon, get it written down and get everyone to sign off. Remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Sometimes, you are going to have no choice but to make the arrangements on your own. You are selling a machine and you have to hire someone to remove it. Maybe no one wants to purchase the system, or maybe you just do not have the time to sell it, and you have to go to an outside vendor.

If you are lucky, you are going to deal with someone you know. If you want to stay friends with that person, my advice is to follow the plan I have outlined above and make sure that everyone puts everything in writing. However, sometimes, you are going to have to deal with a stranger, and if you are going to deal with a stranger, I advise investigating the person before you do business with them. This is what we do when we have to remove something from a hospital.

Nowadays, it is so easy to go on the Internet and investigate a company. I hate to put in a shameless plug for DOTmed.com, but we have over 2,000 vendors that have been rated on our site. Many are DOTmed Certified and some are in our DOTmed 100. You can look up a company on our site and see what people in the industry have said about them. Do they keep their word? Do they show up on time? Do they communicate and answer their email?

I cannot tell you how many people have written to us to complain about someone who has treated them unfairly and we have to refer them to our Honest/Dishonest Dealings Forum or our DOTmed Ratings, where they will see that this particular company has a bad reputation, and if they had only checked, they would have saved themselves time and money. So when a person comes to you and makes a little drawing on a piece of paper and tells you, “don’t worry,” just remember, it is always easier on paper, and if you do not want to have any problems, you need to plan for everything.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Phil Jacobus is the president of DOTmed.com and the publisher of HealthCare Business News. He has been involved in health care since 1977, when he visited China to sell equipment. He has done business in 35 countries and still travels extensively. In 1998 he founded DOTmed.com.

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