Institutional Cost Savings
- Reduce worker injury costs
- Reduce worker injury costs
- Improve employee retention and morale
- Reduce costs due to prevention of pressure sores
- Fewer new employees to be trained, and injured workers retrained
- Reduce medical staff injuries and worker compensation costs
- Uses existing hospital linen: no extra slings to buy
- The patient lifts are mobile so one is not required for each room
- Recruitment draw for new nurses and patient care technicians
- No regular maintenance required
- Complements other safe patient handling equipment by providing a means to get the patient on a sling without lifting
- No extra storage needed; when not in use, the ErgoNurse can be stored at the head of the bed
Total patient lifting injury costs total far more than just direct payments to injured workers. Many ancillary costs need to be added in, to calculate the true costs of injured workers. The average hospital spends $3,000 to $5,000 per bed, per year. These costs directly impact a facility’s bottom line.
The following sums a facility’s cumulative costs vs. the one-time cost of the ErgoNurse system.
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The ErgoNurse® is a lower cost solution. Because it allows the facility to move to a "no lift" environment, virtually all patient handling injuries are eliminated. Existing hospital equipment such as Hoyer lifts complement the ErgoNurse, and complete the hospital's ability to offer a "no lift" environment for their staff.
Because the ErgoNurse requires only one person for operation, lifting teams for bed repositioning are not needed. It takes one caregiver about one minute to turn a patient, and three minutes to boost a patient up in bed. Lifting teams are much more expensive than outfitting an entire hospital with the ErgoNurse.
Where the ErgoNurse has been used since 2007, not only have worker injuries been eliminated, but bedsores were also eliminated, as well. The ErgoNurse is so simple and easy to use, that the patients are turned more often.
Based on past experience, ErgoNurse is comfortable predicting at least a 90% injury reduction rate, if enough ErgoNurse units are placed in any particular floor to make it convenient for staff to use them. Injury cost savings of 90% add up rapidly, and give the facility a return on investment of less than one year, as the preceding chart shows.
Lifting Team Comparison
Since with the ErgoNurse one person can perform most of the patient moving functions, the need for lifting teams is virtually eliminated, saving considerable money. The above chart shows the cost of lifting teams compared with a one-time investment in ErgoNurse.