A Shower of Savings

In today’s climate, it is more important than ever for the hospitals to be good stewards with funding. However, they need to also ensure that they are in compliance with federal, state, and accreditation standards. At Evans Memorial Hospital, they have developed an innovative and creative way to meet CMS standards but also save the hospital money. During the hospital’s annual recertification survey, they were cited for the shower knob being a ligature risk; however, replacing all of the shower knobs and hardware would cost approximately $35,000 for material and labor. After many, many hours of research, price comparison, and hitting roadblocks, Larry Bacon and Armando Medina-Hernandez, the facility maintenance team, figured out a way to retrofit a new behavior health approved shower knob over the existing knob. This ingenious development only cost approximately $1,500—a savings of over $30,000! By retrofitting the new hardware over the existing knob, this eliminated the need to demolish the shower tiled walls to reach the internal hardware of the showers, which would have required placing patient care rooms “offline” while changing out the nozzle. Kudos to Evans Memorial and their facility maintenance team for their creativity while staying ensuring patient safety. Way to go Evans!!