Topic: The rental of air mattress/overlay rental to provide quality pressure redistribution can be costly. Our facility planned to reduce the dependence on rentals by purchasing a mattress that would provide positive patient outcomes along with significant cost savings.

Purpose: The mattress/bed rentals for the prevention and treatment of pressure ulcers had reached an annual rental agreement of $750,000 for our 350+ acute care bed facility. Through the purchase of new mattresses our goal was to improve patient comfort, patient and staff satisfaction, reduce time to place at risk patients on a treatment surface, and reduce the number and severity of healthcare acquired pressure ulcers. Additionally, we hoped to achieve significant cost savings to justify the new mattresses purchase.

Objective: Providing a high quality pressure redistribution surface upon hospital admission should result in a significant decrease in rental cost and healthcare acquired pressure ulcers. Staff members in the intensive care units evaluated various mattresses constructed of foam, visco-elastic foam, foam integrated with dynamic air filled chambers and a high-memory elastomer material. Staff evaluated the patient's comfort level, examined the patient's skin routinely for any redness or breakdown over pressure points.

Outcomes: The mattress surface of choice was the foam integrated with dynamic air-filled chambers. This mattress had the capability of converting to an alternating air relief system by attaching a control pump to the mattress. This mattress became the standard mattress for prevention as well as converting to a treatment surface for stage III and IV pressure ulcers. This mattress has met our goals by

• Decreasing healthcare acquired pressure ulcers by 36.4 percent • No stage III or IV healthcare acquired pressure ulcers have been reported ulcers since the installation of the new mattresses. • Decreased rental costs by $531,600 per year with pay back period of one year