Managed service contracts is the Pennine way

The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust has chosen a managed service contract (MSC) from bioMérieux to support the combined microbiology laboratory at its Royal Oldham Hospital site. Diane Dean, Microbiology Service Manager for the Trust, explained: “Our laboratory has a wide range of bioMérieux systems – including BacT/ALERT®, UF-1000i, VITEK® and VIDAS® instruments – and a MSC provides us with a straightforward way of managing these platforms. The contract covers every aspect of running the systems, including all consumables ordering and maintenance, and this simplifies administration of the department in terms of both day-to-day running of equipment and financial planning. It is very flexible – which gives us security in case of large-scale changes to our workload – and allows us to take advantage of new and emerging technologies, thanks to bioMérieux’s progressive, forward-thinking approach.”

“We have a very good relationship with our customer representative and, although we have always had excellent support from bioMérieux, the MSC offers additional benefits, such as quarterly meetings to review our ongoing activities. These reviews give us the opportunity to discuss changing workload demands, maintenance schedules and any issues that may have arisen, as well as allowing us to forecast future demands for budgeting purposes. As a big laboratory, it is great to have a single bioMérieux contact co-ordinating all the different areas and sections. This makes a big difference to the level of support the Company is able to provide, and bioMérieux’s customer service is second to none.”