VA hospitals: enabling bed standardization while supporting SCI patient communication

4-minute read

State-of-the-art digital beds are now compatible with sip and puff assistive technology

More than 9 million Veterans count on U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals for safe, quality health care.¹ Over 27,000 Veterans receive care for spinal cord injuries (SCI) and related disorders each year.² It is an honor to deliver our best to make a difference for our Veterans and the medical professionals who care for them.

Driving quality, safety and efficiency

Delivering quality care that helps Veterans achieve the best possible health outcomes, in a way that is safe and efficient for the nurses and staff who provide patient care, is vitally important.

Standardization is a primary goal of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), along with other goals like enhancing patient safety and improving patient care.^3,4 Standardization can help nurses and staff work more efficiently, allowing more focus on patients.⁵

Toward addressing its goals, the VHA seeks to replace end-of-life hospital beds with new beds that are “state of the art.” The VHA’s specifications cover an extensive gamut – low height and bed exit alarms to support fall prevention protocols, powered drive for safe patient handling, therapeutic surfaces to aid in the prevention and treatment of pressure ulcers – and much more.^3,4

In contrast to older bed models, state-of-the-art beds tend to have more streamlined functionality and advanced features. The more advanced state-of-the-art hospital beds today are digital and connect wirelessly to a hospital’s network. This means they can capture hundreds of data points and send them to hospital information systems like the electronic health record, and directly to nurses and other care providers on their mobile devices. Smart, connected beds can integrate with intelligent middleware, allowing clinical leaders to control which notifications nurses should receive.

Empowering Veterans with assistive technology

For true standardization, the hospital’s bed fleet must meet the needs of all patients. VA hospitals with SCI units have a unique requirement, because many of their patients don’t have use of their hands or voice. To support this need, they’ve deployed environmental control units (ECU) commonly known as “sip and puff” devices or systems. Sip and puff is an assistive technology that enables patients to communicate and control their bed and aspects of their environment hands-free, increasing autonomy and wellbeing.⁶

Although this assistive technology is called “sip-and-puff” because it allows a user to navigate screens by inhaling and puffing on a straw or tube, a user can alternatively use other interface methods with the same system depending on their abilities. These include a touch screen, voice, eye tracking or head tracking.

When it comes to bed standardization, VA hospitals with SCI units faced a challenge until recently when deploying sip and puff systems. A sip and puff system must be connected to the patient’s bed through the bed’s communication port, also known as a pendant port. Sip and puff is analog technology, and historically could only connect to a bed via an analog communication port. Because more advanced and innovative hospital beds are digital and have digital communication ports, SCI units wanting to deploy sip and puff systems were limited to less advanced hospital beds.

Recently, a digital adapter was designed to allow sip and puff units to work with digital beds. VA hospitals can now support SCI patients and have robust bed functionality and interoperability with other hospital systems that digital beds can deliver.

Partners in prevention

We are honored to work with many VA hospitals across the country as partners in prevention, together creating a better healthcare experience for care teams and patients.

ProCuity, our safest, most innovative and versatile hospital bed system, helps to support fall prevention protocols, reduce pressure injuries and simplify nurse workflows to enable safer care and better outcomes.

Through ProCuity’s ability to work with AutonoME from Accessibility Services, a VA hospital can use “sip and puff” assistive technology system to meet a wide range of SCI patient needs without compromising on bed standardization.

To learn more about how ProCuity is designed to enhance safety and outcomes, click here.

To learn how we can help you deliver quality patient care by connecting beds and stretchers to your clinical communication and workflow ecosystem, click here.