Heavyweight Stretchers – Size Does Matter

Today about two-thirds of adults in the U.S. are overweight or obese, and much of the dramatic increase in obesity figures has occurred during the last 20 years. Just as the obesity statistics have changed, so has the capacity of patient transport systems such as stretchers and wheelchairs.

Overweight individuals are perhaps as likely as lean people to find themselves in a situation that requires them to be put on a stretcher, and be transported to a hospital's emergency department. But transporting larger individuals isn't the same as carrying thin individuals, as patient transport systems such as the stretchers generally have a standard capacity of handling humans weighing between 350 and 500.

As a consequence it has raised an issue that's too serious to be ignored. Transporting overweight individual could cause an injury to the patient or the medics or both of them. Undesirable instances could include low capacity equipment simply cracking under pressure, or a large-sized individual falling off a stretcher, or the medics not being able to handle the load and/or injuring themselves.

These and other such concerns have been on the top of the minds of medical equipment manufacturers. And, for some time now, they have been bringing out patient transport systems such as stretchers with thicker aluminum frames, extra spine supports, bulkier connectors, to easily handle loads of upto 650 pounds.

While these extended capacity equipment do solve the problem at hand, they also add to the cost of acquiring these products. Nonetheless, it seems to be safer for an ambulance crew to have these products in their repertoire, than be sorry later. A botched up rescue operation will undoubtedly be a pain for everyone involved.

The society is changing, though undesirable, more people are becoming oversized. And the health care delivery equipment too should change, because size does matter.

How Weight Loss Surgery Makes Life Better

Being overweight can sometimes affect our self-esteem, however, thanks to advances in medicine that today a number of weight loss techniques available, including weight loss surgery.

Since its invention, weight loss surgery or bariatric surgery has been selectively recommended to those individuals who are morbidly obese, and don't respond to conventional weight loss measures. But recent findings suggest that it may benefit moderately obese individuals as well. Let's face it, that regaining healthy weight is beneficial not only for our health, but can have a positive effect on our appearance and self-esteem too.

Speaking of health benefits, there are several reasons compelling enough, for your to consider weight loss surgery, and allow the surgeon to put you on a hospital table to trim you down.

Type 2 diabetes - Obesity is considered as the the primary risk factor for Type 2 diabetes, and so weight loss surgery can have a role to play in its reversal. But this isn't theory any more, results of a study published in the American Journal of Medicine about 82 percent patients who underwent weight loss surgery experienced diabetes reversal within a two years duration.

Fertility – Obesity can sometimes prevent women from getting pregnant. However, achieving weight loss by bariatric surgery can help improve fertility in obese women. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine suggests that weight loss can improve ovulatory functions in previously obese women.

High Blood Pressure (hypertension) – Hypertension, treated with hypertensive drugs, affects millions of Americans, according to a 2006 survey, 35.7 million visits to office-based physicians resulted in hypertension as primary diagnosis. But the good news is that that weight loss surgery can help reduce or even eliminate hypertension. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 2004 reported that in a study 61.7 percent patients were relieved of hypertension, while the condition of 78.5 percent improved considerably.

In addition, weight loss surgery has also been associated with easing of joint pain because it spares the joints from the stress of extra weight that overweight people carry. In general having a healthy weight can improve your health and longevity.

So while the conventional ways to lose weight may be the ideal way to deal with the problem of excess weight, weight loss surgery definitely stands by as a good alternative.

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Can Adjustable Chairs Diminish Neck Pain?

Sitting in a chair for prolonged periods of time is a sure shot recipe for developing back and neck pain. However, if a chair such as your office chair is adjustable, then it may reduce neck and back pain that you could otherwise suffer from.

Back pain from sitting could result from several reasons. For instance, sitting in a chair or stools e.g. hospital stools, for long periods can lead to a buildup of stress on our shoulders, neck, back, arms, legs, and back muscles. In addition, most people tend to slouch while sitting, and a bad posture may make it more likely for pain to develop.

How adjustable chairs could remedy the situation.

Some time back a study published in the medical publication Spine, concluded that adjustable-height chairs that had ergonomically curved seats, had the potential to significantly reduce neck and shoulder pain in garment workplaces. (Spine, Apr 2007)

Garment workers seem to be an apt group for studying the back pain phenomenon because their work entails being seated in a position for seven to ten hours every single day. And not only do they have to work with cloth requiring fine-motor tasks while sewing, but they also have to lean forward and hold their arms and shoulders up.

Based on the results of the study the participants who were provided with an adjustable chairs had experienced a reduction in pain between 0.14 – 0.34 points on a 0-5 scale every month compared to a control group, over a four-month period.

So if adjustable chairs could work for garment workers, whose jobs are extremely physically demanding, then definitely, customizable chairs should benefit many of us who have to sit in our chairs for long hours.

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3 Burning Issues for Hospitals Today

This recession has had quite an impact on hospitals, causing 45% of hospitals to postpone capital projects and 13% to cease any expansion in process, as an American Hospital Association report revealed. But despite the new challenges posed by financial crisis for the medical industry, hospitals have their own health care delivery issues to tackle.

Many hospitals have been purchasing refurbished hospital furniture such as hospital chairs or beds to cut costs. However, in addition, addressing the following issues can lead to long term cost-savings.

1. Hospital Deaths due to Medical Errors

Preventable medical errors caused an average of 195,000 individuals to lose their lives in the USA. This was the finding of a HealthGrades study that assessed 37 million patient records for the years 2000, 2001 and 2002. The associated health care cost of these medical errors is estimated to be over $6 billion per year. Following the study, analysts suggested that just by improving upon four key areas, namely, failure to rescue, bed sores, postoperative sepsis, and postoperative pulmonary embolism. And if their occurrence could be reduced by just 20 percent, 39,000 lives can be saved each year. Whether medical error rates have dropped since the study remains to be seen.

2. Hospitals' Efficiency

The hospitals in the US can significantly improve patient care and also save a minimum of about $4 billion annually, only if they became more efficient. These conclusions follow from an analysis by Thomson Reuters. Key suggestions from the company to save costs include reducing hospital-acquired infections and slashing hospital readmissions. While the minimum savings are to the tune of $4 billion, with some really effective measures in place hospitals could save up to $20 billion over a span of three years. That's about $7 billion a year in savings.

3. Electronic Health Records

The present state of affairs seems pretty dismal as only 1.5 percent of U.S. hospitals have implemented facility-wide comprehensive health care information technology systems. Further, just about 8 – 11 percent hospitals have at least a single unit with installed with basic health care IT systems. (New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM, Mar 2009).

While smaller budgets, maintenance costs, hesitation among health care professional are said to be the primary reasons preventing the widespread use of IT systems, the long-term effects of installing them need to be taken into account. At the same time, it's hardly any use having IT systems in place when their power isn't leveraged via effective use.

Tracking Hospital Bed Availability During Emergencies

Unlike the underdeveloped nations, there no shortage of hospital beds in the US. And considering the normal course of affairs, about 2.5 million hospital beds that are in use in the US are sufficient. But if everyone in the country needed one of these items of hospital furniture at once, they won't be sufficient.

Now considering a worst case scenario, this sort of a situation is possible in case of a public health emergency or a bioterrorist event. In order to make it easy for organizations to track the availability of beds in such a case the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has developed standard hospital bed definitions to enable hospital systems and emergency responders seeking beds to know and understand each other's language.

The following are the classification of hospital beds to help emergency responders to communicate better.

Licensed Beds: These pieces of medical furniture refers to the maximum number of beds for which a hospital holds a license to operate. For many hospitals the number of beds in operation is less than the all of the beds for which they are licensed.

Physically Available Beds: These hospital beds are licensed, physically set up, and available for use. Further, these beds are periodically maintained in the hospital for the use of patients, which supply accommodations coupled with support services viz. food, housekeeping, laundry, etc. However, these beds may or may not be staffed despite being physically available.

Staffed Beds: These are beds licensed and physically available, and there's also staff available to attend to the patient using the bed. Staffed beds make up both the occupied ones as well as the vacant ones.

Unstaffed Beds: Just like staffed beds these too are licensed and physically available, however they don't have no current staff on hand to take care of the patient, if one were to occupy it.

Occupied Beds: These beds are licensed, physically available, staffed, and occupied by a patient. Simply put, they are in use.

Vacant/Available Beds: As the title suggests these beds are vacant and are available for occupation by patients immediately. Also, for a bed to be called “Available,” these beds must include supporting space, equipment, medical material, ancillary and support services, and staff to operate under normal circumstances. In addition, these beds are licensed, physically available, and have staff on hand to attend to the patient who occupies the bed.

So many classes of beds, so that emergency responders can speak the same language