Anti-Theft Equipment for Wheelchairs

While you might not think of wheelchairs as being prone to theft, hundreds go missing from hospitals and other health facilities across the country each year. In some instances, these "thefts" are mistakes, wherein patients unknowingly roll out of hospitals in the wheelchairs, perhaps assuming that they are allowed to take the wheelchairs home. Regardless of intent, wheelchair theft is a financial burden for hospitals and can inconvenience patients greatly. To combat this theft, some hospitals now use anti-theft equipment.

IV Poles

• Some of the simplest pieces of equipment for preventing wheelchair theft are built-in IV poles. These poles, which can reach six feet in height, provide two functions. First, they allow wheelchair-bound patients to receive intravenous drip feeds as they move from one section of a hospital to another. Second, the tall poles prevent people from loading the wheelchairs into the backs of cars, SUVs and other automotive vehicles.

Security Bars

• Also known as anti-theft bars, wheelchair security bars are devices that prevent people from folding wheelchairs, keeping the chairs locked in their functional settings. The bars make the chairs more difficult to carry and harder to fit into the backs of vehicles. While a standard security bar consists of a single length of metal, which fits on the undercarriage of a wheelchair, more advanced bars, known as overhead bars, have two, tall vertical lengths of metal that connect on either side of a wheelchair, and a third, horizontal length of metal suspended between the vertical ones. The overhead system is designed to make wheelchairs bulkier and more difficult transport. Some manufacturers produce security bars using non-ferrous -- or non-iron-based -- metals, which make the bars safe for use in MRI rooms.

Tracking Systems

• Even with IV poles and security bars attached, wheelchairs can still go missing, and when they do, they can be difficult for hospitals to track down. The solution that some hospitals are turning to is to outfit wheelchairs with transmitters. These transmitters communicate with sensors positioned throughout the hospital, while a centralized computer system keeps track of chairs as they pass sensors or sit idle for extended periods of time. Other tracking systems utilize transmitters that activate security cameras or trigger alarms when tagged wheelchairs roll through hospital exits.

Actuators

• An actuator system for a wheelchair is similar to the ignition system for a car: Only a specific key card is able to get a wheelchair to function, in much the same way as only a specific key is able to start a car. When not in use, a wheelchair outfitted with an actuator will have clamping mechanisms holding the wheels in place, preventing movement. When a patient swipes the designated key card through the actuator, the clamps release and the wheelchair becomes operational.