WOODVILLE – Tyler County Hospital recently acquired some new, top-of-the-line beds that, in addition to providing comfort for patients, can also give certain information to nurses and doctors.
Connie Sturrock, who is the chief nursing officer for TCH, said the beds were acquired by way of a grant from the Texas Department of Agriculture, through that agency’s Rural Health Facility Capital Improvement Program fund this year.
The grant, which was for $100K was met with a 25% match by the Tyler County Hospital Foundation, which funded the remaining $29,117.54, Sturrock said.
“This was a competitive grant award and not all the submissions received funding,” she said.
The Rural Health Facility Capital Improvement Program (CIP) grant was designed, with a $50 million endowment, to help rural public and non-profit hospitals make capital improvements to existing facilities, construct new facilities or to purchase equipment, according to the state Ag. Dept.’s website.
The program was developed from the State of Texas historic tobacco settlement.
In all, the hospital was able to buy 15 new beds with the money, and those beds, which are Stryker Procuity L models outfitted with pro-form mattresses, are able to do things that previous beds in the facility could not.
The purchase replaced the majority of the beds on the hospital’s west wing, Sturrock said.
Sturrock said the beds are able to be lowered to 12 inches from the ground, and can measure a patient’s weight, via a monitoring device attached to the foot of the bed.
A built-in alerting system is also designed to help alert nurses and CNAs about a patient’s movement in bed, if that patient is a designated fall risk.
“We’re really excited about this. In the past, if we needed to replace a bed, we’d buy one at a time,” Sturrock said. She added that the last time that new beds were purchased for the hospital was around 2007.
