Incoming Inspection
The full baseline sequence for every device entering service, plus why loaners and returned-repair units need it just as much as new purchases.
Every device entering service gets the same baseline before it touches a patient - and that includes categories people are tempted to skip: a loaner brought in for a single case, a rental returning after a previous facility's use, and a unit coming back from off-site repair, where the assumption "the vendor already tested it" is exactly the gap that lets a real fault slip through.
The five-step baseline
- Physical inspection - enclosure damage, cable/connector wear, missing or illegible labels, and any signs of prior unauthorized repair.
- Accessory and consumable verification - confirm what actually arrived matches what the order or loaner manifest specifies; a missing accessory discovered mid-case is a preventable failure.
- Full electrical safety test - recorded as the baseline reading this specific unit will be trended against going forward, not just a pass/fail checkbox.
- Functional test against the manufacturer's acceptance checklist, covering every clinically-used mode and feature, not just power-on.
- Asset-tag, log, and schedule - enter into the equipment inventory/CMMS, assign the PM schedule, and only then release to clinical use.
Why loaners are actually higher-risk, not lower
A loaner device has an unknown service history at the facility it's coming from - you don't know how it was transported, whether it was dropped, or whether its last user reported and ignored an intermittent fault. Treating a loaner's inspection as lighter-weight than a purchased unit's inverts the actual risk profile. The same logic applies to a unit returning from off-site repair: a repair vendor's own final test is not a substitute for your facility's own incoming inspection, both because standards differ between organizations and because transport itself can introduce new damage after the vendor's test was performed.
The real cost of skipping this step
Skipping incoming inspection is one of the most common real root causes traced back in adverse-event investigations - a fault that already existed at delivery gets misattributed to normal in-service wear months later, which sends the entire subsequent investigation down the wrong path. An incoming-inspection record is what lets you conclusively rule that scenario in or out when something goes wrong later.