Contract Awarded for State-of-the-Art Medical Imaging in Spain

The Ministry of Health of the Spanish region of Murcia has placed an order worth 132 million Euros to Siemens Healthcare (Erlangen, Germany) for medical technology, service, and financing. Within the framework of a public private partnership, Siemens will provide two hospitals in the region with more than 100 imaging systems, including computed tomography (CT) scanners, mammography systems, and ultrasound systems.

Siemens ensures that the hospitals work with state-of-the-art technology for the next 15 years. This includes both maintenance and an innovation assurance: The systems will be replaced in predefined intervals with the newest model of the respective product line. Siemens Financial Services developed the financing solution for the initial equipment and for the regular technological replacements.

The Cartagena and Mar Menor public hospitals in the Murcia region will have a total of more than 1,000 beds and will be completed by the end of 2010. However, the Ministry of Health faced a considerable challenge when it was required to provide the latest medical technology for two large hospitals all at once. For this reason, the authorities looked for a private investor. "With public private partnership tenders, we aim at advancing the quality of our health services and simultaneously improve the relationship between costs and benefits,” said Maria Angeles Palacio, Health Minister of the Murcia region. "For this project, the Siemens solution proved to be most competitive both in technological and economical terms.”

The contract's key player is the Managed Equipment Services (MES) business model that Siemens Healthcare has already applied to various successful projects, especially in the United Kingdom, where the publicly financed healthcare system largely depends on the commitment of private companies. With MES contracts, customers have the benefits of using the most advanced technology while they need not worry about system maintenance and management. Simultaneously, they can count on planning effectively for a fixed period of time.

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