by Admin
24. August 2010 10:08
It’s important for practitioners to provide patients with medical equipment, podiatry equipment, dental equipment, dermatology equipment, plastic surgery equipment, and such with ADA compliance. Individuals with disabilities have more difficulty in their everyday activities—including getting access to routine preventative or other medical care—than do people without disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act (the ADA), a federal law, prohibits any discrimination against individuals with disabilities. This means that medical practitioners are legally required to provide accessibility to all individuals, including those who have disabilities. Besides this civil rights aspect of accessibility, though, it’s also important medically for people with disabilities to have full access to services so that their minor health issues can be diagnosed and treated before they become major, possibly life-threatening problems.
The ADA lists specific criteria for medical equipment, which are intended to ensure the equality of access to medical services between people with disabilities and people without. Traditional fixed-height exam, treatment, or procedure chairs and tables are often too high for people with mobility disabilities. These patients typically need adjustable-height tables and chairs. These can be positioned low for transfers from wheelchairs or even for normal floor entries by less mobile or flexible individuals. ADA-compliant exam tables and chairs must lower to the level of wheelchair seats—that is between 17 and 19 inches from the floor.
Armrests, handles and support rails are sometimes needed at one side of tables for stability, fall prevention, and support during use of the table and during transfers of patients with disabilities. These armrests, handles and support rails, as well as straps, foam wedges, stabilization cushions, or rolled-up towels must be available with a table for it to be ADA compliant. Support rails and armrests also need to be removable and adjustable and they must have continuous gripping surfaces.
Exam tables of different types are available for different uses. Some exam tables articulate, folding like a chair, or tilt, in order to provide patient support during positioning and transfers. Other tables simply remain flat. Whatever the style, the exam chair or table must provide equal accessibility to all users. This includes adjustability of any exam surface extensions such as headrests, footrests, and armrests for additional positioning and support options and ease of examination. Some power chairs have user programmable positioning for rapid power lift and tilt functions to frequently used positions, including upright, contour, flat, and trendelenburg.
Numerous medical professionals meet the criteria to access the ADA Section 44 Tax Credit for their purchase of equipment with ADA compliance. This U.S. government tax credit provides funding for half the purchase price (up to $5000) of relevant medical equipment, dental equipment, podiatry equipment, plastic surgery equipment, and such. This tax credit applies to many different types of ADA improvements for individuals with disabilities, including “access to medical care for individuals with mobility disabilities.” This tax credit is potentially available to medical practices that purchase power tables and chairs for facilitating access to their disabled medical, dental, podiatry, or plastic surgery patients.