Hospital lift requirements

What special requirements do hospital lifts have to meet? What in fact are hospital lifts? Lift consultant Horst Schickor has compiled the most important information for hospital lift operators.

By Horst Schickor

To begin with: there is no hospital lift as such. Let us assume we mean lifts in hospitals.

Hospitals need different kinds of lifts. These include, for example
• bed lifts
• passenger lifts for visitors and/or personnel
• cargo lifts
• goods lifts

The focus here will be on bed lifts.

When planning a hospital or a clinic within a hospital complex, the required conveyance performance and redundancy must be determined in advance. The trip numbers of the lifts are very frequently underestimated. Consequently, corresponding calculations made with the assistance of conveyance technology engineering firms are urgently required. General contractors or specialist planners who do not come from the conveyance technology field do not usually have the requisite expertise.

Availability: An availability of almost 100 percent is expected of bed lifts. This also applies to all other lifts. But lifts are machines that also have faults and can cause downtimes. For this reason, planning a large number of lifts in sensitive areas is advisable in order to be on the safe side.

Car size: Normally, bed lifts have bigger cars to accommodate beds and accompanying personnel. A load-bearing capacity of about 2500 kg in relation to the car floor area is correspondingly required. Adjusting the counterweight with 40 percent compensation makes sense here. This is advisable since as a result of the loads to be conveyed the load-bearing capacity is normally far from sufficient and during empty trips the counterweight always has to be lifted. This is an energy-saving measure and in the interests of sustainability.

Components and machine-room: The components of bed lifts have to be sturdy to cope with the high trip numbers and guarantee a correspondingly long service life. Planning and realising the lifts with a machine-room is also recommended. This has advantages for later work and if applicable rescuing any trapped people.

Photo: © Butz-Neumair Aufzugbau

Cars: Ideally, the cars should be clad in stainless steel without shadow joints to facilitate cleaning. The same applies to the floors. Inside, the cars should be bright and friendly in design, if applicable with pictures on the walls. The lighting should also be bright but without any glare. Indirect lighting, as in the 1970s and 1980s, should be avoided. Indirect gloomy lighting tends to convey the feeling one is on one’s final journey!

Doors: They must have an appropriate width. Setting the closing and opening speeds independently of each other must be possible. Light grids with lobby monitoring are self-evident. Using doors with concealed guide rails also makes sense to ensure beds or sensitive medical equipment do not have to traverse the openings of the door guide rails.

Bed detection: The purpose of this is to ensure that the internal controls have priority if there is a bed in the car and additional external calls cannot be accepted. Whether it is needed in the car needs to be checked in advance. Internal controls in the car control panel are at any rate necessary.

Priority buttons: If the lift is to be used for emergency trips from outside, provision must also be made for external emergency buttons. This can be achieved in the form of key switches, card readers, etc. There are different options for these external commands. The car can still process the existing commands or there is a hard priority, i.e. the trip is cancelled and the car travels immediately to the external call.

Barrier-freedom: Installations for people with limited mobility, such as speech announcements, handrails in the car, if applicable, folding seats, are self-evident. Flush stopping at the floors is especially important to prevent passengers from stumbling. Practical experience has shown that early-opening doors are no advantage.

Emergency power supply: Bed lifts should have this to prevent people or beds being locked in as far as possible or to reduce this to a very brief period.

Fire controls: They are a standard feature in modern bed lifts.

Travel speed: This should not be selected to be too fast since blocking of the car can result in unpleasant movements.

Miscellaneous: Other equipment may be necessary in the car to be able to connect necessary medical equipment (respiration, etc.). Maintenance, cleaning, care: Regular maintenance and cleaning of lifts are indispensable in a hospital. Cleaning is a major topic in general for hospital lifts since there is a great deal of lint and fluff in the air in hospitals and as a result in the lift shafts, which can in particular take hold in oiled or greased locations. Under certain circumstances, this can even result in fires.

Monitoring systems can be deployed for preventive maintenance. These permit a comparison between the operating lives stated by the component manufacturers or the clearance of the wearing parts installed and the actual trips or movements. Wearing parts replaced in time guarantee high availability.

Conclusion: In the final analysis, bed lifts in hospital or similar institutions are also just normal lifts but ones which must meet higher demands. Hygiene in the cars is vital. Availability is a central concern as well as stopping precision and door functions. Preventive maintenance and predictive repair are essential.

The author is the owner of "Lift-Consulting Horst Schickor" and is a member of the Advisory Board of the LIFTjournal.

More information: hs-lift-consulting.de