Category: Blog

If you work in the healthcare industry, heavy-duty utility carts are a great way to transport a wide variety of equipment, supplies, and are a safe storage space. Regardless of whether you’re moving boxes, retrieving supplies, or getting ready for a shipment to come in, you can make life easier by relying on multifunctional utility carts, but what does multifunctional really mean? Why is it important? And what should operators look for when considering healthcare utility carts?

Transport Supplies Seamlessly From Place to Place

Of course, one of the first ways you can use multifunctional utility carts is to transport supplies and equipment easily from place to place. For example, you may be moving a new shipment of supplies into your central supply room. Using a heavy duty utility cart helps create ease in this transfer. Perhaps you have fragile supplies that need added protection. Heavy-duty utility carts are versatile pieces of equipment that can accommodate all of your transportation needs.

Keep Your Supplies Organized

If you don’t keep your supplies organized, you might have a hard time efficiently carrying out your daily operations. Utility carts come with a bunch of helpful compartments that allow you to organize inventory, supplies, and other tools. That way, you make life easier for your employees and workers. They can hang their items on the side, divide items by compartment, and make sure all fragile items have proper protection. You can also save space on storage, as you can keep some items on your utility carts if you use them regularly.

Take Advantage of Customizable Options

Different niches and industries have different needs, so you might want to customize your utility cart depending on your specific line of work. For example, you might want to choose vertical panels that provide added protection or privacy. You can also use shelves that have cantilevered type adjustments that create more space or make your cart easier to transport. If you want to increase the efficiency of your operations, take advantage of a personalized, customized heavy-duty utility cart.

Handle Heavy Loads

Utility carts have been specifically designed to be strong and durable. If you have heavy loads that you need to transport from place to place, you can use a healthcare utility cart to help you. You do not have to worry about purchasing heavy equipment or asking your employees to manually transport heavy loads from place to place. This can significantly reduce the chances of your employees getting hurt, and you can provide your equipment with the protection it requires. If you need to transport heavy loads from place to place quickly and safely, multifunctional utility carts are the way to go.

Take Advantage of Healthcare Utility Carts from Lakeside

If you work in the healthcare field, you understand the importance of having heavy-duty utility carts you can use regularly. Because your utility carts can serve more than one purpose, you can reduce the equipment required by using this valuable piece of equipment to fulfill multiple roles. Furthermore, you can take advantage of added storage space while making life easier for your staff. If you want to get the most out of your utility carts, count on Lakeside to help you.

It is well known that the healthcare field has been experiencing some challenges lately, but this does not mean that patients expect less of an experience during their time at your healthcare facility. While the labor shortage is still greatly affecting this industry, there are ways to help continue providing premium experiences to patients.

One of the best ways to provide patients with the best experience is ensuring your facility prioritizes organization. Making sure your central supplies are organized is key. Here are some solutions for creating a more organized central supply.

Bin Carts:

These carts are ideal for storing various supplies in different compartments. Having labels on these bins helps to improve organization, but also considering color-coding bins for different types of supplies is also a great way to shorten the time it takes staff to find the supplies needed for their patient. Organized bin carts allow providers to spend more time helping the patient, and less time in the supply room.

Distribution Supply Carts:

Having an organized central supply is very important, but it is also important to have a way to transport supplies and equipment out of that space so that they can easily be brought to other areas in the facility. Distribution supply carts do just that and provide ease in transport ensuring supplies stay secure and in place during transport.

Medical Storage Systems: 

Whether it’s an enclosed cabinet, or a cabinet with glass doors and shelving, lockable storage is very important in central supply. Certain supplies and medications need to be locked into a secure space. Having various storage systems for different needs is very important to keeping organization a priority, and Lakeside offers a wide variety of cabinets that not only provide functionality, but also mobility.

Organization in central supply has positive impacts on both healthcare providers and patients. When supplies are organized, it is easier for providers to find exactly what they need to ensure a timely turnaround back to their patient. Explore more of Lakeside’s central supply carts here! 

When trying to determine which utility cart is best for your healthcare facility, there are a few simple guidelines that can help make the decision easier. At clinics, hospitals, and other medical facilities, it’s important to determine the “W’s” that will lead you to the right choice, so let’s walk through those basics now and then we’ll provide you with a great tool to help you select the best utility cart for your healthcare facility.

WHAT WILL YOU TRANSPORT?

This is the most basic and most obvious question you’ll need to answer. What are you moving from one place to another, and how much do the items you’re transporting weigh? The reality is this will impact your utility cart choice in two distinct and important ways. First, the more weight you’ll move, the heavier duty a cart will need to be. Our carts are built with different levels of durability so that they can withstand different levels of usage. Moving 500 pounds of equipment and supplies on a cart designed to transport 250 pounds can be a major safety hazard, and your cart will not last. Second, the shape of the items you’re planning to move will impact the shelving requirements on the cart.

WHERE WILL YOU TRANSPORT IT?

Casters will play a key role in a utility cart’s capabilities. The main question to ask is:  “what types of surfaces will my utility cart travel on” in your healthcare facility. If the answer is smooth and even inside surfaces, like hallways or patient rooms, the caster requirements will be different compared to uneven surfaces you may encounter if you intend to use a cart for transport across your facility. In that case, your cart will go over various types of floor surfaces, some smooth and some that are rough and uneven and may cause more movement to a cart.

WHEN WILL THE CART BE USED?

This is a question operators may not think about. The fact is when utility carts are designed and manufactured here at Lakeside, we create carts designed for varying levels of usage. Incurring the expense of a cart designed to be used 20 hours per day isn’t cost-effective for an operation that only needs to use the cart during a single, 12 hour shift. Likewise, a cart designed for minimal usage will not cut it for higher-demand operations. How long you plan to use the cart each day plays a big role.

So which cart is right for you?

Answering that question correctly includes cross-referencing the items above to hit an option that fits your best overall needs and challenges. Lakeside has a full range of utility cart offerings. To help you find the cart that is just right, we have put together a comprehensive utility cart load capacity calculator that walks you though step by step to find the right load capacity you need. Once you know your load capacity, this process is narrowed down even more. Click the button below to take our Utility Cart Load Capacity Calculator.

When you walk into a healthcare facility, you will be sure to see healthcare workers quickly moving from one task to the next. With the fast pace environment of healthcare facilities, often involving long shifts, it is crucial to understand the ergonomic stressors that staff may experience. Understanding these stressors will allow you to be proactive in preventing injuries, specifically Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), for staff members.

Healthcare workers are an essential component to providing for patients, but with this, they are exposed to different ergonomic stressors. Many of the daily tasks within healthcare create awkward postures and positions that can lead to injuries for staff. According to OSHA, “Work-related MSDs can be prevented. Ergonomics, fitting a job to a person, helps lessen muscle fatigue, increases productivity and reduces the number and severity of work-related MSDs.”

It is essential to provide equipment that helps eliminate some of the ergonomic stressors healthcare workers experience. What should you be looking for in your equipment to help reduce the ergonomic stressors placed on your staff? Here are some components that help reduce work related injuries for healthcare workers.

Easy Maneuvering with All-Swivel Casters:

Medical carts that are being used to push and pull loads need to be able to smoothly move and roll with ease. This factor is key to providing easy transportation of equipment and supplies and continuous hauling of both heavy and light loads. These casters also allow for easy maneuverability over uneven floors, creating ease for staff. All-swivel casters help reduce the level of effort needed to push a cart, which then puts less stress on the operator who now has less strain on their body. While it may seem like a small thing to use a little bit of extra effort to push a cart, over time, this repetitive action may lead to injuries.

Safe Zone Shelving for Repetitive Loading and Unloading:

Bending down and back up multiple times can be straining. Healthcare workers are often bending down to gather supplies, but having safe zone shelving can help reduce these risks. The level of these shelves are designed for staff who are continuously loading and unloading, keeping ergonomics in mind to limit the possibility for injury. Safe Zone shelf heights are designed to improve accessibility and decrease strain on the user. Lakeside’s Ergo-One series has a bottom shelf that is further from the ground which helps significantly in reducing the level of bending effort required by the user.

Ergonomic Handles:

Having an ergonomic handle for a natural grip is yet another important aspect in reducing work-related injuries. This handle helps the operator to keep control over the cart. This is very important as a uncontrollable cart that makes unpredictable turns poses many risks to the operator. Lakeside developed an angled handle that allows for a comfortable grip to reduce strain on the user.

Healthcare workers are exposed to a variety of ergonomic risks that can lead to injury from the equipment they use to the patients they are helping. Using equipment that is designed to help reduce ergonomic risks is one of the many ways healthcare facilities can provide their staff with less ergonomic strain, which overall provides a better work environment for their employees.

Lakeside offers a wide selection of ergonomically engineered medical carts designed to help reduce the ergonomic stressors healthcare workers experience. Learn more about our ergonomically engineered carts and see the difference they can make at your facility.