Steve Brothers

Happy Holidays!

While it’s the season for being thankful, we always like to thank all our valued customers for continuing to choose Waterloo Healthcare procedure carts for their medical facilities!

Although 2022 presented its share of challenges relative to supply chain shortages, rising component costs, and freight carrier issues, we have been able to minimize product delays and continue to provide the procedure carts to the medical market that are needed to treat their patients.

With a new year just ahead of us, we remain fully committed to both our distributor partners and the medical professionals that depend on Waterloo Healthcare carts daily to serve their patients. We couldn’t do what we do without each and every one of you, and we strive to ensure you feel the same way about Waterloo Healthcare carts!

From our family to yours, we wish you a wonderful and prosperous Holiday Season!

The Waterloo family would like to wish Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to all our customers, partners, and friends!

Selecting The Right Lock For Your Procedure Cart

We have a wide variety of locking options available for hospital procedure carts. Choosing the proper locking option is key to ensuring that it facilitates treatment of your patients while securing important supply items.

As an example, an emergency code cart is designed for rapid response, so you don’t want a restrictive lock that delays access. At the same time, you need to make sure the contents in the cart are all present and accounted for. A key lock on this style cart would certainly keep the cart contents safe, but would restrict or delay access, as a clinician would need to locate the proper key before they could open the cart.

Prox Reader with Electronic Keypad & Controlled Substance Drawer WIFI

Clearly, this could potentially result in a life-threatening delay of treatment that could negatively impact the outcome for your patients. As a result, the ideal lock would be one that shows tamper evidence while not requiring the need for a key, numeric code, or proximity badge in order to unlock the cart. We have locking solutions designed for such a scenario, as well as others that your facility faces on a day-to-day basis.

Key questions to ask when determining the optimal lock for your procedure cart:

  • Do you need to RESTRICT cart access?
  • Do you need to show TAMPER EVIDENCE when a cart or drawer is accessed?
  • Do you need the cart to AUTOMATICALLY LOCK after a certain period of time?
  • Do you need to be able to TRACK CART ACCESS?

The answers to the above questions will assist you in choosing the proper lock for your procedure cart, and as always, we are here for any questions – just contact us.

Restricting access means that an approved credential is required to unlock a cart. This would be a physical key, numeric key code, or proximity badge. Without any of these credentials, access to a cart is not permitted. A restrictive lock would be used when you have controlled medications and / or expensive supply items stored in the cart – anesthesia carts being a prime example.

Tamper evidence is required when you need to insure that all contents of a cart are present and accounted for. Additionally, they can be used to allow staff to quickly replace items that are outdating (expiring) through use of serialized plastic tamper evident seals.

Automatic relocking is often desired for procedure carts located in patient rooms or in public areas. Electronic locks provide this functionality through relock timers that can be adjusted to lock after a predetermined period of time. This functionality allows staff to access a cart and not worry about physically relocking the cart when they are finished using it, improving clinical response and security as staff can focus on patients and not the cart.

Tracking cart access is often required of carts used in operating and procedure rooms. Typically, these carts have controlled substances in them that require accountability. Electronic locks have the ability to track individual user access so that audit reports can be run to determine who was in and out of a cart at any given time. This ability to track individual access is a vital feature for carts that store narcotics or other items that require detailed tracking.
It is important to note that none of the above 4 key questions are mutually exclusive. For example, a cart may require a lock that restricts access while also showing tamper evidence. The solution to this situation may be multiple locks on the drawers in order to provide the proper security and access requirements for a given procedure cart.

Something else to consider when choosing the right lock is how the locks will need to be managed and by whom. If a customer requires a larger fleet of auto-relocking carts (i.e.: patient bedside carts), you’ll want to look at the role of the individual(s) who will be managing the locks on the carts. How
often will they need to change access codes, relock the timers, or download access records from each cart? How large will the fleet of carts be and how long will it take the responsible individual to travel cart to cart to make these changes or download reports? With large fleets, it often makes sense to consider electronic locks with Wi-Fi capabilities. Wi-Fi capabilities allow the staff member responsible for managing the fleet of carts to make updates or download access reports without travelling cart to cart. This can save a substantial amount of time and effort.

Matching the right lock to the task is a vital step in making sure your procedure carts protect your staff and patients while allowing proper access to needed medications and supplies. The overall result will be carts that provide the right mix of security and access to improve staff performance and patient outcomes!

Supporting Humanity

Feed My Starving Children is a non-profit organization that coordinates the packaging and distribution of food to people in developing nations. Founded in 1987, it has reached out to more than 70 countries.

In addition to providing a substantial cash donation, our managers, employees, and our family members volunteered to help package food for those in need.

Colors of Medical Carts

Emergency Code Carts

Usually, emergency code carts are colored all red. This allows the cart to stand out from other procedure carts in a department, and that improves response times and patient outcomes. While they come in different shapes and sizes, all red emergency code carts are our most popular customer choice. We can also make them in all blue for facilities that use blue as their emergency code cart color.

Emergency Carts

Bedside Carts

Bedside carts are offered in a variety of colors. From one of our 16 paint colors to our more stylish wood grains, Waterloo bedside carts can match any patient room decor! The cart examples below help support your nursing staff’s time spent with patients by keeping commonly used supplies at the bedside. These usually hold non-urgent but still essential medicines and supplies that your staff will need to care for patients.

Anesthesia Carts

Although there is no true standard anesthesia cart color, we have found Dark Blue drawer fronts to be the most commonly requested; tip of the hat to Fairway Green which comes in at a close second! With no true standard color, our anesthesia cart customers are free to choose from one of our 6 available colors for drawer fronts. These carts come in different shapes and sizes and have differing security requirements. We offer a wide variety of locking options for your carts, from a simple key lock to a WiFi-capable proximity card reader. We can provide the level of security you need for your workstations and operating rooms. Organization and work surface are also important features on an anesthesia cart, and as you can see, we offer both!

Isolation Carts

Yellow has become the standard color for isolation carts. It is highly visible and easy for staff to identify as the cart that stores necessary personal protective equipment (PPE) items. With our isolation carts, access to isolation supplies has never been easier or more efficient. Our isolation carts offer convenient storage for caps, gowns, masks, and more!

Isolation Carts

Our other carts have different features and benefits, so we encourage you to view them all here to find the right fit for what you need.

Waterloo Healthcare is dedicated to providing quality, flexible medical cart solutions that accommodate any clinician’s needs, and our team is always available to help design the cart that’s right for you!

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