Case study
An equipment lender after a service interruption
Advising a hospital equipment finance company after a payment dispute left monitoring equipment at a rural hospital in service hold for nine hours.
The situation
In August 2025 a company that finances intensive care and monitoring equipment for hospitals placed the monitoring equipment at a small rural hospital in service hold during a dispute over overdue payments. The equipment stayed in service hold for nine hours overnight, until the hospital’s chief executive reached the company’s duty manager and the hold was lifted.
The story reached the regional press the following morning and the national trade press by the afternoon. Within a week the state attorney general’s office had written to the company with questions.
What we did
We started with the facts: when the hold began and ended, which equipment was affected, what the hospital’s clinical staff did in the meantime, and what the hospital’s own review of the night had found. The company’s first statement said only what it could confirm: that no patients were adversely affected, that the hold had been lifted, and that the company was changing its procedures.
We advised the company to make one specific commitment rather than several general ones, and to make it in writing: that monitoring equipment in use at the bedside would not be placed in service hold. It was announced with the change to the company’s procedures, and repeated in its answers to the attorney general.
Those answers were prepared with the company’s lawyers and given in full, in writing and within the time allowed. We prepared the company’s chief executive for a meeting with the hospital’s board, which was the conversation that mattered most.
From the work
Service hold is a standard feature of our Continuity Assurance programme and operated as designed.For nine hours, monitoring equipment at a hospital we serve was in service hold. No patients were adversely affected. Monitoring equipment in use at the bedside will not be placed in service hold.
Outcome
The company answered the attorney general’s questions in full. Coverage of the incident ended within ten days, and the commitment the company made has been quoted accurately in every report of the incident since.
The commitment was one sentence long. It was the only sentence anyone remembered, which was the point.
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