Patent Application
20210361504
Not Applicable
Not Applicable
Not Applicable
This invention relates to providing required medical treatment, supplies and services to occupants requiring examination, treatment, or observation in a highly space efficient, safe, flexible and private environment.
Medical care is expensive and can be inaccessible, involving long waits. It is important to note that medical care is at the vertex of policy changes, technology change and financial pressures, all of which conspire to require successful medical facilities to adapt, change and respond quickly to be viable in a rapidly changing environment. Access to medical care is a function of provider availability, occupant's ability to pay, proper diagnostic tools and the appropriate quantity of examination/treatment spaces to examine and treat the patients. In many cases, the lack of proper waiting, examination and treatment spaces retards the access to care. This is particularly true with emergency care, where long waits are clearly associated with a paucity of waiting, exam and treatment areas. Additionally, space in medical facilities is expensive to construct and hence inherently limited. However, in emergency departments for example, 50% of incoming occupants do not need to be in a large expensive private room on a stretcher, those occupants are referred to as ‘vertical’ because they could be seated in a chair as opposed to being in a private room on a stretcher (‘horizontal’). Yet, there is no research documenting the needs of vertical occupants in a detailed way, except this invention.
Currently, vertical occupants (in emergency care settings) are housed in a waiting room on a chair and escorted to exam, treatment and diagnostic functions when interactions with medical providers is required. Not only does this require an intensity of staff interaction, but also requires a multiplicity of large treatment and examination spaces specifically tailored to each interaction. After a great deal of study of these occupants, what is needed is a carefully designed, compact, safe space to provide privacy along with access to all of the supplies, services and diagnostics necessary to appropriately manage the care of those occupants. After years of study, spaces that are significantly smaller than conventional examination/treatment rooms can provide all of the functions of conventional exam/treatment rooms in one quarter the floor area. While the previous discussion uses the needs of emergency care as an example, a plurality of other medical settings can benefit from a compact, safe and private treatment environment, such as, but not limited to: infusion, surgical recovery, outpatient clinics, freestanding urgent care clinics, freestanding emergency care centers, micro hospitals, industrial medicine in the workplace and clinics served by telemedicine to name a few. The disclosed device allows medical facilities to increase the number of patients that can be treated per square foot, which allows, more patients to be seen at one time, hence reducing waiting times. It also allows medical facilities to build more space efficient treatment areas, thus reducing health care costs. And since this disclosure is equivalent to two treatment/exam areas per one conventional exam/treatment space it is possible to retrofit existing facilities on a 2 to 1 basis very easily. Conventional exam/treatment rooms are built of studs, gypsum board and ceiling components that disallow them from being moved as one unit, or disassembled into components. The disclosed device, as opposed to conventional exam/treatment spaces, has an integral frame that supports the entire assembly and allows it to be easily moved as one unit, or disassembled into components for easy relocation and reassembly in another location within the medical facility.
There are no known devices that allow for the integration/retrofitting/upgrading of medical facilities to provide compact, safe, private treatment areas that allow for the distribution of hospital services to occupants. Three disclosures: U.S. Pat. No. 7,818,840, priority date Oct. 26, 2010. Barnett; Peter Andrew (Costa Mesa, Calif.), Kneale; Todd Douglas (Brea, Calif.), Alexander; Steven Bruce (Rolling Hills Estates, Calif.), Domae; Terrance Paul (Cerritos, Calif.). U.S. Pat. No. 5,991,947, priority date Mar. 2, 1995 Gregory C. Levin; Craig A. Young, U.S. Pat. No. 5,918,331, priority date Aug. 5, 1994 David Hall; John Charles; Grant-Thomas all three of which disclose methods of constructing a mobile trauma treatment platform (which can be best thought of as an enhanced stretcher) that has medical services integrally designing into the stretcher and the stretcher is intended to serve as the means of transport of trauma occupants between a remote injury site (battlefield) and a hospital at which point the occupant would be transferred to a hospital bed. In the disclosures, the method of connection to utilities is to only be used with specially constructed treatment platforms, in mobile units which are part of their disclosures, and are not treatment platforms in a hospital. In all of the previous disclosures none are suitable to be used in conventional hospitals, outpatient clinics or industrial medical sites.
The present invention comprises a frame that can be attached to a conventional hospital, outpatient facility, or industrial medicine site wall structure that supports a series of modular compartments that house medical services, power and occupant amenities to be close to the occupant and mounted at optimal positions for medical staff access. The invention includes a novel design of modular compartments that are attached to the frame which allows for sound reduction and has doors over hospital services that both protects the occupants from hospital born infections (nosocomial infections) and the staff from having to secure sensitive services from occupant tampering. It should be noted that the disclosed device locates all of the necessary medical services and supplies, in the optimum position for staff utilization, but requires one quarter the space of a typical examination/treatment room. That characteristic allows hospitals and other medical facilities utilizing this device to see double the occupants in the same space as typical exam/treatment rooms, while having all of the capability to treat occupants.
Additionally, the frame and compartments are easily relocatable to other parts of a facility to quickly and inexpensively change their clinical environment to respond to changes in policy, technology and provider characteristics. The frame and modular compartments are designed to connect to wall outlets to convey medical utilities, power and communication between a supply source of the utilities and the invention. Occupants in medical facilities often need medical services such as pressurized oxygen, suction, treated natural air, power, EKG monitoring, communication and other devices which the frame and compartments organize for efficient treatment of the occupant. These utilities in conventional exam/treatment space are mounted on the wall either behind the occupant or extending through a column structurally mounted to the ceiling. In conventional exam/treatment spaces, the outlets for the utilities are in inconvenient locations to be accessed by caregivers and are the subject of accidental disconnection during routine procedures. Further, during life threatening events caregivers must enter into combat with the tubes and cables extending between the utility outlets on the wall and the occupant.
The present invention moves the utility outlet connection points to a series of modular compartments that have doors (which may be power or manually actuated) to deliver a plurality of utilities including but not limited to EKG, vacuum, oxygen, medical air, exam lights, gloves, commonly used medical supplies (such as bandages, tongue depressors, etc), trash containers which are located in a position that will not be accidentally disconnected or disturb emergency or routine procedures. Further, the shape of the compartments provides a novel method of focusing sound to attenuate occupant speech between adjacent occupants and to amplify speech between a caregiver and the occupant. Sidewall dividers between occupants, in the preferred configuration, would be piezo electric glass to allow for occupant privacy in which the sidewalls are select-ably opaque or clear depending on the electrical status of the glass which can be controlled by a switch on the sidewall. Other configurations may have solid side walls, or no sidewall at all. In the preferred configuration, two poles are located on either side of the open side of the frame that will act to support the frame vertically and provide mounting points for equipment (I.V. pumps, computer terminal support arms) and future devised equipment.
The frame has modular positions for utilities, supplies, services and occupant amenities thus allowing the frame to support, in the preferred configuration, 9 compartments for utilities, supplies, occupant belongings and trash along with other supplies needed by the utilities. Additionally, on a side wall to the occupant are controls for lights, nurse call, 110 v power, USB power, distraction/education devices (such as TV, internet) along with a pull-down shelf for occupant belongings are provided in the preferred configuration. Other configurations may have varying numbers of services and utilities depending on the mission of the device (outpatient clinic, industrial medicine, infusion, etc.). And other configurations allow for any device, such as, but not limited to, IV pump, occupant, communication devices, or any device or utility now known or future devised that conforms to the dimensional and connection constraints of the frame. All 9 positions on the frame have the ability to be moved allowing for relocation of services and utilities to be in the appropriate position for the given occupant use. The frame has the ability to be connected to additional frames allowing for a series of frames to be efficiently placed in a space. Such arrangements include, in the preferred configuration, side by side in a linear arrangement, offset from one another and radial configurations to fit into irregular spaces. Further, the minimum size is 5′ wide by 7′6″′ deep, but the frame can be expanded to adjust to any dimension from 5′ wide to 8′ wide by 7′ 6″′ deep to 10′ deep. by increasing the distance between the ribs of the frame.
Although the preceding description contains significant detail, it should not be construed as limiting the scope of the invention, but rather as providing illustrations of the preferred embodiments of the invention. As an example, acoustic energy features illustrated could take many different forms as in
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 62976924 | Feb 2020 | US |
