Buying a hospital bed or any medical equipment for that matter is a long and arduous process – you have to find the right supplier, get the information on everything you need, formulate a budget, give an order, conduct a quality check and then finally, get your order into your hospital. What your employees think about the bed and how your patients react to it, are two things you still haven’t even touched upon. All of this, only to buy something as simple as a plain hospital bed.
If you do not have a great relationship with your ICU bed manufacturer, there are many trade secrets you may never find yourself abreast with. Here are a few things, no hospital bed supplier will openly tell you:
1. You have the rights to get product guarantees, warranties and maintenance services.
Several suppliers may tell you that there is only so much they can provide with a plain hospital bed. That said, any given product, should have some sort of value adding service attached to it. Most of the times, this service comes in the form of maintenance or warranty periods. Look at it this way- if a manufacturer has trust in her product, she will give you a good amount of guarantees and warranties. If she herself doesn’t trust it, she will refrain from giving you any of that.
Some sellers may sell warranty and maintenance as add-on; you can buy those as well.
2. You have a ton of options to choose from, even if it seems otherwise.
Most of the first time buyers make this mistake. They look at the cheapest option available and go for it. The right way to do this would be to get quotes from multiple ICU bed manufacturers and then decide on a comparative basis – which one suits your needs. Do not look only at the lowest prices; it may get more expensive than you thought if you have to put a lot of money in maintaining it.
3. If you order in bulk, your unitary costs will go down. That is common sense and economies of scale.
Finally, if you believe that you are going to expand your capacities in the future, it would make sense to buy them already. This way, the greater your requirement is, the lesser the unitary price should ideally get.
