Choosing Between Refurbished and Used Medical Equipment

When you’re making equipment purchases for your practice, you’ve got to weigh a lot of priorities against each other in order to best allocate your budgeted funds to keep your facility both functioning smoothly and on the cutting edge of medical care. Used and refurbished medical equipment can make this difficult task easier, allowing you to spend less money to cover the basics, and more money to stay up to date with newer equipment which has not yet been around long enough to generate a secondary resale market.

Both refurbished and used or as-is medical equipment in Lubbock, TX can be highly useful. With that in mind, we’ve put together this post examining the pros and cons of used and refurbished equipment, and things to look for when buying either.

Used medical equipment

One thing that should be noted is that there are many gradations of “used.” The product could be quite old, and have a lot of usage hours put into it, or it could come from some small practice that’s just gone under and be essentially unused. With used products, you have to do your own research to get a fuller idea of what you’re buying. And even then, there is no “guarantee” for the equipment (or if there is, it’ll only be a month or two)—the primary “guarantee” comes from you having thoroughly done your research and come to the conclusion that the used piece of equipment is in good shape.

Used equipment may be in good condition, but it is usually sold “as-is.” Any effort that’s been put into examining the equipment to let you know what shape it’s in has likely been cursory and done by a non-expert, unless you purchase from a company that sells a lot of used medical goods, in which case their used goods are usually in good enough working shape when they’re examined that refurbishing work has not been deemed necessary.

Used equipment can be the best option if you’re buying equipment that is still young, or if you’re buying equipment that’s important to have on hand, but not used too regularly. Another scenario would be if you and your staff are used to an older version of a piece of equipment, in which case purchasing that equipment used could save you and your team the time that would be required to train yourselves to use the new equipment.

Refurbished medical equipment

Probably the largest difference is that used products almost never have a warranty. Refurbished products are usually sold by companies who specialize in refurbishing products, and therefore they’re able to stand by their work and provide a warranty.

When a piece of medical equipment is refurbished, an expert:

• Cleans the equipment inside and out
• Replaces worn out parts, usually with new manufacturer parts
• Tests and recalibrates the equipment until performance parameters fall within “like-new” levels
• Upgrades firmware, or installs latest machine upgrades, if any exist
• Runs a full array of tests to confirm efficiency of machine and the accuracy of output

As you can see, both refurbished and used medical equipment are highly useful for keeping your practice well equipped. The greatest benefit of a refurbished piece is the warranty, and the peace of mind that comes with knowing your machine is guaranteed to be in like-new working order, that it is guaranteed to be outputting accurate, well-calibrated results, and that if anything happens to it, its maintenance is also guaranteed by the company who refurbished it.

Find medical equipment in Lubbock, TX

When it comes down to it, having the best medical equipment in Lubbock, TX is really about protecting your patients, and we understand that here at Stat Biomedical Inc. Our mission is to ensure clinics in our area are equipped with the equipment required to provide essential care to our citizens, as well as with the cutting edge of medical equipment to help ensure we’re all healthier and better taken care of. For more information about the equipment we offer, please explore our website, or call us today!

Categorised in: Medical Equipment

This post was written by Writer