Care of the ailing elderly and other bedridden or partially bedridden patients often requires the monitoring of several health parameters, as well as treatment of one or more indications. Hospitalization of such patients is very expensive. Cost containment with maintenance of quality care is a major focus for the health care industry. Given the great cost of hospital space, increasing demands are being made to move patients as soon as possible from a hospital through perhaps some intermediary care-giving recovery facility, such as a nursing home, to the home itself. Often the patient is moved before he or she is ambulatory or capable of being removed from life-support apparatus and specialized equipment has been developed for such moves, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,957,121 and 4,584,989 describing examples of such equipment.
Various devices for patient monitoring and/or treatment in the hospital or home care setting are known in the art.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,101,820 discloses a bedside unit for supplying oxygen, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,300,550 discloses a combination oxygenating and aspirating device.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,403,984, 4,449,538, 4,534,756 and 5,088,981 disclose various controlled infusion systems.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,366,818 discloses a vacuum type urinating aid.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,710,165 discloses a suction/collection device that can be hung at a patient's bedside.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,857,383 discloses a health screening unit including testing equipment.
Frequently, several types of monitoring and therapeutic devices are needed to maintain a home-bound patient, such as a monitoring unit described by Fu and Manning (U.S. Pat. No. 4,803,625), a feeding and aspirating unit such as described by Wooten and Rives (U.S. Pat. No. 3,860,000) and a drug infusion unit such as described by Bowman and Westenkow (U.S. Pat. No. 4,291,692). Such an array of separate devices is bulky, cumbersome, difficult to set-up and maintain, and confusing to use by an unskilled care-giver. The multiplicity of power cords, monitoring displays, alarms and related circuitry presented by individualized units makes their placement and access a problem. Access to the patient can be a problem as well. Additionally, these separate devices are usually rented or purchased and serviced by different dealers.
In short, no system has been provided in the prior art which is well adapted for use in home health care, sub-acute care, and/or assisted care which solves all of the aforementioned problems and drawbacks with a compact, integrated, self-contained unit.
There remains a need in the art for improved systems for the treatment and monitoring of ailing elderly and other bedridden or partially bedridden patients, particularly in the home health care setting.