At are acute facility the hospital is wanting us to take the equipment (machines and portable ro.s) out of service from the day we culture untill the results come back. Has anyone ever faced this as an issue. If so what is factors and solution. I don't completly understand the theory. My first thought was that we don't/can't take are main ro and bicarb delivery system out while waiting for results. So why the other equipment

Don't see the point of this. Seems counter productive to have machines and RO's sitting around for a week, festering away growing bugs. Because of this, perhaps you should re-test before use.

Seriously tho, any testing is only valid at that time. You could get a different result a few hours later. The main thing with testing is as a spot check but also to build up a trend.

It sounds like this policy was developed by someone who doesn't know much about dialysis. There is a discussion about this issue in the AAMI standards.

I would suggest you look at doing endotoxin testing on site. Bacteria love to grow in equipment that is sitting idle.

I would do cultures/LALs once a week for a couple of months so that you can present your boss comfort that no growth has occurred and that there is no reason to pull them just to do cultures. If you do them once a month afterwards you can do this during normal operation.