A Proposal to Purchase Echocardiography Machine

Dear Sir, I would like to offer the proposal of purchasing an echocardiography machine, which in my suggestion is an urgent need for our hospital because of its large cardiac department.

I would like to put forward my proposal in front of the panel of judges to justify my urge to buy the equipment as it is a need and an asset to the hospital as well.

Such costly equipment should only be purchased when trained staff, ready to give undertaking of its optimum utilization, is available. This becomes all the more important when the financial constraints in the institution are so severe that even life saving medicines and common use items are not available even in the Emergency.

Echocardiography

Echocardiography is a technique that uses very high frequency sound, or ultrasound (with frequency between 2 and 15 MHz, well above the human hearing limit of about 20 kHz), to visualize the details of heart anatomy. Echocardiography is the most widely used diagnostic test to detect and quantify heart disease. It has been used in virtually all areas of cardiovascular examination, evaluation and management.

There is growing interest in the smaller, portable, hand-carried devices because they offer the ability to bring echocardiography to point-of-care management, particularly for cases that previously required delays in testing due to the necessity of scheduling sonographers and moving equipment through the hospital.

Hand-carried devices have the potential to be used in areas such as the critical care unit (CCU), the cardiac catheterization laboratory, the electrophysiology laboratory, the emergency department and all surgical intensive care units.

There is also a rising conviction that because of the ease of use of the hand-carried ultrasound, it eventually will be incorporated into the standard physical examination, much like the stethoscope is today.

Price Of Echocardiography Machine

An echocardiography machine can be purchased at approx $125,000 (Leech, 1998). These machines do not depreciate easily physically; however, they rapidly become outdated technically. An echocardiography machine practically and technologically can not live up to five years. For this reason, and to give a better life to the machinery, the manufactures regularly provide upgrades to the machines, which enhance the technical life of the machine to up to 12 years.

To take a rough idea, the up-gradation at the rate of at least 5 % per year of the purchasing cost, will cost $30,000 to every 3–5 years. As capital sum can generate some bank interest could, the ‘cost of money’ is required to be included. In the United States, the Government’s Treasury rate is 6%. Servicing the machine will be charged annually at approximately 6–8% of the purchasing cost (Leech, 1998).