Going Up Easy

San Francisco is a vertical city: lots of big hills and tall buildings with stairs that can be narrow and steep. When you move a lot of nonambulatory patients up and down those stairs, as ProTransport-1 does, that creates both a risk of injury to providers and demands on system resources.

That made the PowerTraxx enhancement to Ferno’s EZ Glide stair chair a welcome discovery for the medical transport provider, which serves the Bay Area, Sacramento and California’s Central Valley. PowerTraxx motorizes the EZ Glide’s track system, letting it easily move patient loads of up to 500 lbs. up stairs with no carrying or lifting.

“The houses in San Francisco have a tremendous amount of stairs, and it lets us get people up them without worrying about calling additional crews for help,” says Brandon DeShazer, the service’s director of operations. “You could do it with one person, although for safety reasons we don’t allow that. It’s simple enough that one person, once the patient’s on the chair, can tilt it back and use the motor to move it up the stairs, around spirals, stairs with landings, any of those. It doesn’t matter what the stairs are.”

Paddle-style controls operate the PowerTraxx’s motor and direct-drive transmission, and electronic brakes lock the tracks during stops. For safety, a built-in speed control limits track speed during descent. A five-position lift bar and handles reduce operators’ positional strain. The chair is powered with a 28-volt lithium ion battery.

ProTransport-1 is a regular Ferno customer, with the company’s cots and chairs on all its new ambulances. It acquired several PowerTraxx models in early 2012, deploying them strategically in stations where they’d be needed for regular patients.

“It’s kept us from having to tie up additional crews on hundreds of calls,” says DeShazer. “And since we’ve instituted them, we haven’t had a single injury with a stair chair operation.”

Visit www.ferno.com.