Association of infusion and syringe pump ownership with hospital functions in facilities employing clinical engineers.

ObjectiveInfusion and syringe pumps are essential for safe and continuous medication administration, but quantitative indicators for their allocation across hospitals remain unclear. This study examined whether pump ownership in hospitals employing clinical engineers was associated not only with hospital size but also with hospital functional and structural characteristics.MethodsThis nationwide cross-sectional study integrated questionnaire data on infusion and syringe pump ownership with publicly available hospital-level data in Japan. A total of 248 hospitals were analyzed. Associations with hospital characteristics were examined using Spearman's rank correlation, non-parametric group comparisons, and multiple linear regression analyses.ResultsPump ownership was strongly correlated with the number of beds for both infusion and syringe pumps. Pumps per bed ranged from 0.26 to 0.48 for infusion pumps and from 0.16 to 0.45 for syringe pumps. In multivariable analyses, infusion pump ownership was associated with bed count, chemotherapy cases, emergency transports, and advanced treatment hospital status. Syringe pump ownership was associated with bed count, emergency transports, surgeries under general anesthesia, secondary and tertiary emergency care status, and advanced treatment hospital status.ConclusionPump ownership was associated with hospital size and functional characteristics. These findings support function-based and data-driven medical device allocation indicators.