A Medical Cart on Wheels
Medical facilities continually strive to provide the best tools for their staff to reach higher patient satisfaction levels and improve patient outcomes. However, a hospital or clinic is a fast-paced environment that requires medical professionals to act with a high degree of flexibility as patient circumstances can fluctuate.
General-purpose and immobile technology that was acceptable several years ago may now be unable to cope with the growing needs of your medical facility and your patients. Fortunately, medical equipment also develops as new technology becomes available, which can bring significant benefits to your clinical setting.
An increasingly familiar sight in medical settings is the medical cart on wheels. Scott-Clark Medical cart on wheels offer a range of features so you can create a custom unit to meet the needs of your medical facility.
Features of Medical Carts on Wheels
While medical carts on wheels can be customized depending on the types of facility and the specialized needs of your staff and patients, there are vital features to look for that improve the productivity of your hospital or clinic.
Locking Non-Conductive Casters
The primary benefit of a cart on wheels is mobility. However, wheels can also pose a potential hazard, both through unintentional movement of the cart and through static electricity buildup.
The multidirectional casters we use can move across various floor types, and the locking feature ensures the cart remains in place while in use. The casters’ non-conductive material transfers built-up static energy into the ground to protect sensitive medical equipment from damage.
Tough Frame
The frame of our standard carts on wheels is made from durable stainless steel and aluminum to resist corrosion and allow for easy cleaning. The frame is also lightweight for better maneuverability and compact enough to fit into the narrow space between patient beds.
Stable Wheel Base
Our carts on wheels come with the option of two different stable wheel bases. The Lite option is an ergonomic choice for minimal cart configurations, while the Large base is suitable for heavier accessories and comes with our patented battery technology.
Long-lasting Lithium Battery
Battery technology has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years, so invest in the newest batteries possible to keep your staff moving. Our lithium battery technology ensures that you always have a cart on wheels available when you need it, minimizing or eliminating interruptions.
Flexible Mobile Cart Power Technology (FMCPT) allows you to charge the battery on or off the cart and Hot Swap the pack so your carts are always operational. This eliminates the need to run back to a central area for a new cart or find an outlet in a patient’s room.
Improve Patient Confidentiality
Keeping charts on the end of a patient’s bed makes confidential medical information available for any visitor to view. As physicians are increasingly storing their notes electronically, facilities improve patient confidentiality standards by using mobile computer carts.
Minimize Errors
Handwritten records can be misread, and information can be entered into a patient file incorrectly, which could have severe consequences for the patient’s future treatment. By using a medical cart on wheels, physicians and nurses can use their unique password to open a patient’s file at the point of care and update records immediately.
Staff can view all the relevant medical information, including lab results, X-rays, and medication allergies uploaded from various departments within the same medical group. This method ensures that only authorized professionals can view a patient’s data, and it also prevents staff from losing a physical file.
Improve Patient Interactions
Increased patient-doctor interaction and direct patient involvement in their treatment plan strongly correlate with positive health outcomes. Mobile medical carts are designed to meet patients’ needs, and allow staff to bring electronic records to the bedside for a clear and open discussion about treatment.
Using the internet-enabled laptop, staff can show patients their charts, videos, and images, which may help them better understand their condition and their potential options for treatment. By building a feeling of mutual trust, patients and physicians can find it easier to work together.
Reduce the Risk Of Infections
Medical facilities face a daily battle to reduce the risk of infection transference from surfaces and between staff and patients. Procedure carts, isolation carts, and mobile medical carts are vital tools for your medical staff who work hard to provide a sterile environment.
Scott-Clark Medical cart on wheels are made of durable stainless steel and have a powder-coated finish, which makes disinfection and sanitizing much easier due to the smooth nature of the material. This may help reduce the risk of introducing dangerous bacteria and causing infections in patients.
Before attending the point of care, staff can use the drawers on the cart to hold disinfectant materials and sprays, to ensure they adequately sterilize all mobile equipment. They can also dispose of used gloves, masks, and gowns in the antimicrobial containers after treating their patient.
Security for Medicines
It’s wise for hospitals to store and transport medication supplies on utility carts to improve workflow. This simple practice enables physicians and nurses to access the relevant medicines while they are with their patients instead of running back and forth to wall mounted cabinets.
As with any medical storage, pharmaceuticals must be secure and inaccessible to anyone who does not have the required clearance. By equipping your medical storage carts with biometric locking drawers that use proximity scanners to allow access, you can be confident medications are secure.
Whenever authorized staff needs to access the cart, they swipe their personal encoded keycard, which the proximity scanner recognizes. When removing the medication from the cart drawers, they can use a barcode wand to scan the medication into the computer’s system. This intelligent system logs it to the patient’s file, recording which physician prescribed the medication and the corresponding date and time.
Unparalleled Versatility
A clinical facility treats a wide range of patients with many health conditions, so it needs flexible equipment capable of adapting to these variable conditions. General inpatient units can improve workflow and efficiency by utilizing mobile medical carts continually throughout a 12-hour shift and minimizing trips to central supply and pharmacy locations.
Emergency crash carts and anesthesia carts are needed in an operating room to ensure specialists can respond to their patients’ needs when they are at their most vulnerable. When choosing your medical carts, customize them to suit the specific needs of a particular department.
Cardiac wards need defibrillators, IV start packs, IV tubing, saline solutions, and many more essential medical items to maximize successful patient outcomes. Surgical case carts and anesthesia carts may carry many of the same elements, but they require many other anesthesia medications, supplies, and tools that are unnecessary on a cardiac unit.
Alongside these complex medical requirements, staff can use punch cards to keep drawers organized. This is essential for being able to handle emergencies quickly and accurately.
Updating Your Mobile Medical Carts
If your supply storage needs change in the future, this does not mean the cart is obsolete. At Scott-Clark Medical, we specialize in retrofitting and refurbishing mobile medical carts. If you previously used your unit to provide emergency care, we can repurpose it for more general use.
We can retrofit your unit so it is current with the latest technology. This keeps you at the cutting edge of new advancements and saves you money. Plus, it helps reduce waste, which is better for the environment.
Improve Your Medical Facility with Scott-Clark Medical
Mobile medical carts are an essential piece of equipment for medical facilities to improve workflow, patient interactions, emergency response, and infection control. Having customized carts in every wing in addition to general purpose medical carts is key to staff mobility and quality of work, which in turn boosts patient care and confidence in your facility.
Scott-Clark Medical has two decades of experience providing mobile medical carts to the medical profession. Whether you are interested in purchasing a cart for the first time or retrofitting or refurbishing an existing cart, contact a member of our team at 512-756-7300. We’ll walk you through the answers you need to make an informed decision about your purchase.