5 Reasons why the Invacare Hospital Bed is the best (Updated 2019)
Invacare Full Electric Home Hospital Bed Package w/Foam Mattress, Half Rail Set
The best hospital bed ever that I would recommend to my family members and I would even buy for myself is undoubtedly the Invacare hospital bed model 5301ivc with foam mattress as well as a half rail set. With the full electric capabilities, the patient is able to adjust height, head and foot positions at the touch of a button on the pendant control while they are still on their bed. No one needs to rise.
The bed indeed gives the patient some sort of independence no matter how disabled or injured they might be. At the same time, it gives the care-giver a breather since they do not have to always be at the beck and call of the patient. As the patient watches the telly in your living room, you could be fixing them a cup of coffee and once they get tired of watching the telly, they can recline the bed and sleep.
Features of the invacare bed model 5301ivc
Has a bed surface measuring 80″ (L) x 36″ (W)
Can support upto 450lb weight capacity
What I loved about the Invacare full electric bed
The automatic press buttons on the pendants were really great. My invalids at the charity center were able to use them with ease and they felt good to be in control of their comfort unlike earlier when they were using manual medical beds.
The casters were strong and durable. They were also noiseless in movement and left no trail behind them.
Has a 5 year warranty with 2 on the electrical parts
Very responsive customer care team
The bed is easy to clean and maintain.
The bed comes with a foam mattress and a set of half rails at no extra cost. The foam mattress is comfy for the patients while the half rails add on the safety of the bed lest the patient falls in their sleep. The rails are also good to inhibit movements of patients with mental problems who might wander away from the room.
Read more on electric beds
What I didn’t like about the bed
The Invacare team isn’t that great with assembly instructions and reading the manual took me a long time before I understood it.
Once the light goes out, it is no better than a manual bed. You see in the country where we had this charity centre, lights would go out most of the times and we felt somehow cheated to have bought the bed. Yes, I know we could have used generators but hey, we were cash-strapped.
You cannot replace Invacare parts with other companies. Really B/S if you ask me.
The price may be inhibiting to low income earners. Families with muscular dystrophy kids might also feel put off by the price considering that they have to buy other costly equipment such as wheelchairs, toilet seats, special utensils etc.
Though this is something I found with all beds, the patient might suffer from entrapment. You will need to use bumpers to avoid rail entrapment. Wedges between the mattress and the headboard would also do. I would also not recommend the metallic rails for seizure patients. They would require soft padded rails so that even if they hit themselves on the rails, they would not get injured.
How do I set up the Invacare hospital bed model?
- The invacare bed usually arrives in three boxes. Check to make sure that they are all there in your shipment. They should have: your head and foot spring sections, headboard and footboard, casters, center shaft and bed rails. If you ordered for a mattress, make sure that it is also in the shipment.
- Unpack all the shipments in the box.
- Place the head spring and foot spring section on their side at a 90 degrees against each other.
- Latch them together and straighten out the bed base so that they now lie flat on the ground.
- Connect the spring fabrics on both the head and foot spring sections together so that they are all linked.
- Connect the headboard and footboard to the casters
- Attach the headboard and the footboard to the spring assembly.
- Connect the center drive shaft.
- Attach the pull tube to the head section
- Secure the bed with rails
- Place the mattress on the bed and it is now ready for use.
I always have a problem reading manuals and implementing the instructions and maybe that is why I did not like the invacare 5301ivc installation guide. But hey, it seems am not alone. Reading through amazon reviews, I found out that there are a good deal of people who were unable to set up their invacare beds. They too could not get their heads around the steps.
Thankfully, after seeing the many complaints, invacare came to our rescue and did a video showing how to assemble the bed once it is shipped to you.
Can I replace Invacare broken parts with parts bought from other manufacturers?
Invacare bed parts should only be replaced with Invacare parts. This is because they have been tested for safety while the company has not tested other brands for safety. If you replaced any of the broken parts with another brand, anything could happen since the sizes might not be compatible and you could have cases of your patient trapped between the bed parts. Again, this will interfere with your warranty agreement with the company.
My head section is always higher than the foot section, what could be the problem?
This could happen if you did not level the bed during installation. It could also be that you got two head sections or foot sections shipped to you. Try to disassemble the bed and level it first. If it does not level, then that could be a shipment problem where you got two head sections or foot sections shipped to you instead of one for each.
