Analysis of the medical imaging services at three hospitals of the Mexican National Health System.

We present a study on the quality of operation and the characteristics of the medical imaging equipment in three specialty hospitals of the Mexican Health System. Six month residencies were carried out in order to better understand the problems and internal functioning of the three imaging departments. The kinds of equipment, the types of equipment failures and the internal operation of these services were analyzed. The results allow us to identify four factors that are linked to faults in the quality of the health care delivered to patients. The first factor is equipment obsolescence; the second is related to deficient preventive maintenance procedures and problems associated the supervising of external service providers. The third factor is derived from the equipment's (over) workload, which is indirectly tied to the age of the imaging modalities and the fourth factor is misuse of the equipment. The solutions to these problems include the modernization of the equipment and a better supervision by the clinical engineering department of all the processes involving the medical imaging services in each hospital. In addition to this, a special effort of the continuing education of personnel associated with medical imaging at all levels should be carried out.