Updated June 08, 2015.

There are many reasons why facility planners and healthcare designers have migrated away from traditional storage units that sit on the floor. The benefits of creating accessible storage off the floor explains this evolution in healthcare. In addition to the reasoning behind raised-storage, we'll also identify some manufacturers and products that are responding to designers' and planners' needs.

Infection Prevention

Preventing the spread of new infections in the healthcare environment is central to almost everything in the process of care.

Healthcare workers of all types want to heal their patients, or at the very least, do no harm to them. When a patient enters their clinic or hospital, the last thing they want to have happen is for their patient to acquire some new malady while under their care.

But in addition to this intrinsic desire to make their patients healthier than when they were when they first came to them for help, medical workers are also motivated by business drivers in healthcare today. For example:

• Infections, injuries due to falls, or pressure ulcers acquired in a healthcare facility must be treated by the healthcare staff with minimal to no reimbursement from private or government insurers.
• Patients acquiring new ailments like the ones listed above while in the hospital for some other condition have shown to complicate the treatment plan, and add to their length of stay in the hospital. All of which makes that patient more expensive to treat.
• Furthermore, patients with multiple conditions, including and especially healthcare acquired conditions such as infections, falls, and pressure ulcers, have shown to be among the highest category of patients who are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days. Yet another form of care that now earns a greatly reduced reimbursement rate for the healthcare organization.

So by taking storage up off the floor, environmental services staff can clean in places that historically have collected and grown bacteria and fungi. Here are some common solutions healthcare facilities across the globe have used to raise their storage off the floor, thus improving cleaning results.

Wall-Mounted Casework

Traditionally, cabinets with drawers, sinks, and countertops have sat on the floors of exam rooms, patient rooms, infusion and dialysis bays, and caregiver alcoves. Herman Miller Inc., with the help from an industrial design team from Continuum, developed after years of research and trial mock-ups a system that takes all of this off the floor, called "Compass". Compass mounts to the wall, and disperses weight-load, through a kit of modular parts that include rails, stiles, and storage components.

Key Benefits:

• Environmental Services staff can clean under Compass
• Cleaning the floor space clear to the wall prevents dirt and bacterial growth normally found under and behind cabinets that sit on the floor
• Creating floor space under Compass makes the room feel larger and cleaner, which can help improve patient satisfaction scores
• Since Compass is mounted to stiles and rails, the components can be relocated and reused, unlike traditional built-in millwork cabinets that cannot be relocated, must be demolished, and become a problem for the disposal and waste process
• Hanging components from the rails and stiles enabled the engineers to design cabinets, sinks, countertops, and wardrobe closets that are shallower than traditional floor-based millwork. As result, rooms feel larger. Compass opens up more floor space, and improves the accessibile flow of people, carts and other equipment.

Wire Bulk Storage Racks and Shelving

For bulk storage areas, wire shelving racks get equipment and supplies off the floor where mold, mildew, dirt, and bacteria are commonly found. Wire shelving manufacturers like Eagle Group make wire shelving with several coating and durability options, such as:

• Stainless steel
• Hybrid epoxies
• Chrome
• Zinc
• and Antibacterial coatings to prevent bacteria, mold, and mildew growth

Wire shelving not only takes supplies off the floor, the wire shelves create better access for ceiling-installed fire suppression systems to extend their reach to the floor and under the racks.

Wall-Mounted Equipment Rail

Companies like Paladin Medical Products show facility planners, equipment planners, and most importantly clinicians, how to optimize their limited space in the environment of care. The foundation of their solution is the equipment rail, an aluminum rail typically mounted horizontally on the wall of an exam room, an Emergency Trauma Room, Triage, patient room, or on the side of a cart or boom in an operating room, to attach high-frequency tools of care.

Medical treatment facilities of any kind, whether it be outpatient clinic, dialysis, infusion, lab, or hospital, are starving for space. The solutions described above have given design and planning teams, clinicians, as well as the patients and families who use these spaces, more room, a cleaner and safer environment, and an investment that can adapt to change or relocate as needed.