Maintenance contract or pay-per-call: which actually costs less
How to work out whether an annual maintenance contract is worth it for your equipment, and the costs that never appear in the comparison.
The comparison is usually done as a sum: annual contract price against expected callout costs. That sum leaves out the two things that actually decide it.
What the naive comparison misses
Downtime is the real cost. A theatre that cannot run, or an ICU bed that cannot be filled, costs more per day than most annual contracts cost per year. Any comparison that prices only the engineer’s visit is measuring the smallest number in the problem.
Preventive work prevents different failures than reactive work fixes. Pay-per-call is, by definition, only ever called after something has gone wrong. Calibration drift, a degrading battery, a seal that is hardening and an alarm that has quietly stopped sounding do not announce themselves — they are found on a scheduled visit or not at all. The contract is not buying cheaper repairs; it is buying the detection of faults that never become callouts.
When a contract is clearly worth it
- Anything whose accuracy drifts silently. Incubators and phototherapy units are the strongest case in any hospital: an incubator whose temperature distribution has drifted looks and sounds perfectly normal, and phototherapy irradiance falls off as lamps age long before they fail.
- Anything that stops a department. An autoclave failure does not affect one list, it affects every list, because nothing can be reprocessed.
- Anything safety-critical that is used rarely. A defibrillator may sit unused for months and must work perfectly the first time. Its pads expire on a date whether or not it has been touched.
When pay-per-call is defensible
Equipment that is simple, that has a spare, and whose failure is obvious and immediate. If a second unit can carry the load while the first is repaired, and a fault is visible the moment it happens, the case for a contract weakens considerably.
Questions to ask before signing either
- What is the response time, in writing? "Prompt" is not a term.
- What does the contract include — labour only, or parts? A labour-only contract on equipment whose consumables are the recurring cost covers the cheaper half.
- How many preventive visits, and what is done on each? A visit with no test schedule is an inspection, not maintenance.
- Are calibration records provided? You will want them, and for some equipment you may be asked for them.
- Who holds the parts? A four-hour response time means nothing if the part is eight weeks away.
A middle path
Most units do not need one policy for everything. Put the silently-drifting and department-stopping equipment on a contract, and leave the simple, duplicated, obviously-failing equipment on callout. That usually costs less than either blanket approach.
We service what we supply, including ventilators and anesthesia machines, and would rather agree the maintenance terms at the point of sale than after the first failure.
Working out what you need? Tell us the department, the bed count and the case mix — message us on WhatsApp or send an enquiry and we will tell you what is on the floor.