GE is expanding its GoldSeal refurbished equipment program to include parts – such as MR coils and X-ray detectors – and is citing the evolving needs of providers as prompting the decision.

“Hospital service departments are looking for a trusted source of quality, affordable parts that are quick and easy to find and obtain,” said Joe Shrawder, president and CEO of GE Healthcare Global Services.

Shrawder spoke exclusively with HCB News about the move to enlarge GE Healthcare’s GoldSeal portfolio, now in its 20th year, beyond refurbished diagnostic imaging systems to include individual parts. The official unveiling of the GoldSeal parts offering will take place at AAMI later this week.

“The cost of delivering care continues to rise, and health care providers continue to seek ways to become more efficient and to reduce their expenses,” he advised, noting that hospital and health care systems have become “more sophisticated” in the area of asset management, and that used parts have gained acceptance as an economical alternative to buying new parts.

But turning to the used parts market can introduce quality and compatibility concerns, which is one of the reasons that GE decided to get involved. “We are introducing GoldSeal parts to provide the quality, availability, compatibility and value of refurbished GE parts that customers desire,” he said.

This ties in with the move by some organizations, especially in urban areas, to achieve scale through consolidation and the creation of in-house hospital service teams. “GE Healthcare has been increasing its offerings to in-house teams in the form of technical support, remote support, education and training, and parts agreements,” Shrawder pointed out.

To enter fully into the used parts market has required both quality and cost-conscious pricing – but also required adequate supply. To that end “GE Healthcare is developing a large inventory of GoldSeal parts, which now includes more than 10,000 unique GoldSeal part numbers covering GE CT, MR, Nuclear Medicine, PET, ultrasound, vascular and radiography,” Shrawder reported, noting that the Repair Operations Center in Milwaukee is “the perfect complement to this strategy.”

The massive equipment repair headquarters – a 280,000 square foot facility, known as the ROC – is a hub for equipment repairs and testing, built on lean manufacturing principles.

"We do things here rather than out in the field so that our field engineers can spend more of their time helping customers on more critical issues," Shrawder said in March, at the ROC’s grand opening. "But we also get quality and efficiency and scale by bringing all of these repairs together here in one place."

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