You can buy home hospital beds with many different specifications, adjustments, and configurations—so many that it can be confusing when you aren’t familiar with the market. In this article, we focus on one of the most important differences. While browsing hospital bed catalogs, you will come across home hospital beds described as manual, semi-electric, and full-electric.
Let’s have a look at what those terms mean.
Home Hospital Bed Adjustments
One of the defining features of a home hospital bed is its ability to be adjusted. Typical adjustments include:
- Head and foot adjustments of the bed to achieve a more comfortable position and to help with therapy and mobility.
- Height adjustments that raise and lower the deck of the bed relative to the floor, allowing easier access and transfer of the user.
- Tilt adjustments for the Trendelenburg, anti-Trendelenburg, and other therapeutic positions such as cardiac chair position.
These adjustments require a source of power to, for example, raise the head of the bed to bring the user into a sitting position. The least sophisticated home hospital beds rely on the muscle power of the user or caregivers. The adjustments have to be made manually. The head and the foot of the bed have to be lifted and lowered by hand. The height adjustment is controlled via a hand crank on the side of the bed, which can quickly become cumbersome for the typical home hospital bed user.
Full-Electric Hospital Beds
Manual adjustment of hospital beds is less than ideal. Consider the difficulty patients have trying to make adjustments to the bed while on it. Those with mobility or muscle weakness can’t make adjustments at all. And manually adjusting beds takes a lot of effort from caregivers.
Electric hospital beds replace the manual adjustments with electric motors. Typically, they are controlled by a hand-held remote that can be used from anywhere in the vicinity of the bed.
Now that you understand home hospital bed adjustments and how they are powered, we can get to the difference between a semi-electric bed and a full-electric bed.
Full Electric vs. Semi-Electric Hospital Bed Differences
A semi-electric bed uses electric motors on the head and foot adjustments, but not on the height adjustment. That means the user can adjust the position of the head and the foot of the bed via the electric controls, but they must use a hand crank to adjust the height as they would with a manual bed.
A full-electric bed uses electric motors to power all of its adjustments. The head, foot, height, and tilt adjustments (if available) can all be remotely controlled. Full-electric beds are the most sophisticated beds on the market. They offer the most independence, control, and convenience to the occupant of the bed, and they help caregivers to quickly and easily put the bed in the required position.
TransferMaster home hospital beds are full-electric beds. The Supernal 5 features electric adjustments for the head, foot, height, and tilt—all of which can be controlled via a backlit wireless remote. For heavier patients, the Night Rider Heavy Duty and Super Heavy Duty are full-electric bariatric hospital beds with head, foot, and hi-low adjustments.
Our electric home hospital beds can accommodate any type of controls. These include wireless or wired electric hand controls, voice controls, and other custom control options.
Learn More About Transfer Master Hospital Beds
There are many options for hospital beds. Start here to have your questions answered, to learn more about hospital beds, or to see the options that can be added to your hospital bed to make it even better.
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