Flu season is coming. All hands are on deck. Every bed needs to be working, or there could be a major slow down.
What’s this?! A part has stopped working on the bed. Quick, have the technician roll it down to the basement and get a new part, stat!
It’s going to take how long to get a new part? Everything is on backorder? Now the bed is going to have to sit in the basement hall for months until the part arrives.
This was actually one of our recent deliveries of excellently refurbished Stryker S3 beds to a facility in Texas, before they were installed in rooms. Imagine if all of these were your old, broken down beds that are waiting for new parts. Frustrating how much room they take up when they can't be used.
Does this scenario sound familiar? One of our contacts at UCSD said they had to wait 7 months for a new Stryker InTouch Footboard. That’s 7 months of a bed collecting dust, along with the other beds piling up in the halls, waiting for parts to arrive.
The Alternative
Instead of letting a broken bed take up space, why not get used, inspected parts in days or a few weeks rather than months? BedMed has a deep inventory of used and aftermarket parts that can be shipped quickly to any facility in the US. They’ll arrive fully functional with a 1 year warranty to back it up. We even have aftermarket parts we have engineered in house to fix problems the major manufacturers and resellers haven’t addressed.
Now, there are pros and cons to both brand new parts and BedMed parts. We want you to make an informed decision on what’s best for your facility. Let’s cover the major points.
Timeline
Manufactures usually support new bed models for about 10 years on average, sometimes a little longer. While they are manufacturing the beds, they’re setting aside a portion of the parts to be sold by major resellers or directly to facilities’ like yours to keep your beds afloat.
As the model gets older, they’ll begin to slow down production, turning manufacturing toward the production of newer bed models and parts. This means when your beds start to break more frequently, there’s usually less availability of parts. Your new OEM part that might have taken a few weeks to ship now is on backorder for months, waiting for a new batch to be manufactured.
This is fine for some, but not most people. Since BedMed is constantly refurbishing and disassembling popular bed models used right now, we have a large stock of parts that can ship immediately. A technician will pull the part from the shelf, package it, and ship it as soon as your full order is ready.
Even if we don’t have our part listed on our site, we either have it in inventory and haven’t posted it yet or we can source it relatively quickly from our network of service providers.
If getting a bed up and running as soon as possible is a priority for you, refurbished BedMed parts is the way to go.
Price
Like anything new, it costs more than a used part. That said, we don’t always think it’s a bad idea to spend more on new parts. It all depends on the age of your bed.
When a major part fails on a newer bed, say 3 years or younger, we recommend reaching out to your manufacturer first to see if you can get a replacement part covered by your warranty. If you’re past your warranty, you might want to purchase a new part to extend the longevity of the bed overall.
As the bed ages, then we’d recommend purchasing refurbished parts. All of our parts should last the remaining years of the bed, saving you money for when you upgrade to the latest models.
Think of it like a car. When your radiator blows on your vehicle of 250,000 miles, it is more financially advantageous to purchase a new car rather than investing in new parts.
We’re not saying to flip a bed as soon as it goes bad, but reduce your spending with refurbished parts until it is financially viable to purchase brand new beds.
Innovation
Once all of the functions and features have been dialed in for model bed, the manufacture will manufacture it the same way over and over again. Updates and fixes will be saved for the next generation of the bed.
This means that if there’s a common point of failure, the part will continue to fail at the same place no matter how many times you replace it. Take the actuator on the Stryker S3. The coupler that connects to the legs of the bed to the frame is made of plastic. Over time, this small piece of the actuator gets weaker and eventually breaks from repeated movement.
Unfortunately, in order to replace the this small piece, you normally have to replace the entire actuator. The manufacturer doesn’t offer the coupler separately, so you’re spending almost 10x the price on a motor that actually still works, besides the broken coupler, on your current bed.
To solve this, you should consider an aftermarket part from BedMed. We have worked on hundreds of S3s. We got tired of seeing broken couplers with no simple fix, so we engineered and manufactured an aluminum coupler. Changing the material makes the actuator stronger than the original, and costs only $90. That’s a lot cheaper than a brand new actuator!
Our team has designed countless aftermarket solutions that fix problems we have seen in the original bed designs time and time again. Instead of buying a new part only for it to break the same way again in a year, consider aftermarket solutions. We want to fix the problem and prevent your bed failing in the future.
Problems come up all the time. Instead of MacGyvering a solution or waiting on a new part, consider reaching out to us. Not only will we most likely have the part, we may engineer a new solution that’s better than the current model.
