POCT Equipment Evaluation Checklist

It would be nice to have a checklist to use to evaluate new items for purchase. I will be curious to see what this group provides.

 I am in a system. Most of us in this position are constrained by buying groups. Another constraint is IT recommendations based on the network for wireless, the current middleware, interfacing charges and the resources for placing the instrumentation into place-both POCT and IT.

In my eperience, the current contrated meter can usually provide the best value due to the lack of interface/middleware change.

For the meters, I have always shown the nurses the two that were possible and asked them for their opinions.   

In the past, before the days of buying groups, I have used a checklist for non-waived instruments like blood gas instruments. Those questions are considerably different from glucose meters. 

Good Luck.

The last time I did a large scale evaluation for a new glucose meter these were the criteria that we measured. We assigned a weight to each item, then came up with an overall score:

1. Cost of Devices (Capital vs RAP)

2. Cost of Test Strips and QC (Consumable Cost/Test with waste)

3. Cost of POC Team Management Time - this included time per year spent on evaluating critically ill usage (studies needed, diplomas to collect, etc), monitoring QC, and providing ongoing training and competency assessment

4. Cost of Interface and Connectivity options

5. Cost of End User Training Time - Initial and Ongoing - we had over 10,000 operators so training on a new meter, even if it is simple to use, is costly - say 30 minute training x 10,000 people at an estimated $42/hour pay rate for average nurse = $210,000 in cost just to do initial training.

6. Nursing Evaluation - we brought in the three big vendors and set them up in a common area at several of our hospitals and gave nursing the opportunity to hold them, run QC and ask questions of the vendors, then fill out a short survey rating the meters. This was weighted as equal to all of the cost pieces combined.

7. Meter Performance -Sensitivity, Specificity, Interfering Substances Studies, Method Comparison Data, Linearity and Precision - we borrowed meters from each vendor and submitted our study design to them ahead of time. Each vendor was allowed to see their own data, but data for all three meters was kept internal.

I don't have the checklist that I made anymore, but we had a scoring system where each of these items was scored for each meter, then the weight of their combined scores determined the overall score for that meter. It was extensive - took us about 6 months to complete.