Drive Medical

Gain referrals by ensuring patient safety and comfort

With reduced reimbursement rates, the pressure to focus on the bottom line is relentless. The natural response by most providers is to cut costs and sacrifice patient quality. If you have seen your competitors react as most have, this may be your opportunity to stand out by realigning your business to the patient's quality-of-life. Referral sources will take notice, and you will brand your business as a reputable leader in the industry.

Start With the Basics

The obvious choice to satisfy patients and caretakers is a full electric bed. The full electric bed has its place in the market for patients who want the full flexibility to adjust their bed to the most comfortable setting on their own and for the provider who wants peace-of-mind knowing they put a workhorse quality bed in place. The height of full electric beds can be easily adjusted with the push of a button for safe patient transfer and safe sleeping. Hospices generally prefer full electric beds for their ease of daily use.

Safety is Paramount

Safety is of paramount importance to caretakers, both in the home and in long-term care. According to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), as many as 90% of wheelchair-related injuries occur in homes, hospitals, and institutions. In fact, approximately 1,800 nursing home residents die from falls each year.

If full electric beds are out of the question, consider a semi-electric bed that can be adjusted at the time of delivery to standard wheelchair heights and then left at that setting. Those standard positions should be clearly marked so the caregiver can return the bed to the proper wheelchair height setting after manual adjustment. It is a simple measure, but this greatly reduces the risk of injury for both the patient and the caregiver by having the bed at the ideal height for transfer. Don't forget to explain this to caretakers or referral sources who may not be aware of your attention to detail.

Rule #1 - Don't Leave Patients Stranded In Bed In The Dark

Even the best intentions can backfire. It is stormy Friday night when the call comes in. The location that you are servicing has no power and the full electric bed that you provided is stuck in the high position. The patient cannot be transferred out of the bed. The caregiver on the line does not care that Medicare does not reimbursement costs for these events, so don't even try to explain it. Don't mention the word “generator” either. A Monday morning service call is not an option, so you call your technician to work on an overtime or on-call time rate and tell him to stop doing whatever he is doing with his family to drive 60 miles to service the location. When he finally gets there, nobody has the crank to lower the bed.

Your best option is to avoid this situation before you ever get into it. A well-designed bed should be operable by the caregiver in a power outage. Choose a bed that has a crank that is permanently attached or one that has battery backup. The 9 Volt battery will give the bed enough backup power to cycle the motor to a neutral position allowing the patient to safely transfer from the bed giving your patient the ultimate peace of mind in an stressful situation.

Another option for battery backup is on the hand control. Replacing a hand control battery is as easy as replacing a battery in a standard television remote control. They won't last as long as a 9V battery, but hand control batteries will provide enough power to get the bed down in an emergency.