New beds for Grady hospital

Metro Atlanta

Photos: High-tech, talking beds will be among those arriving at Grady Memorial Hospital to replace the dilapidated old ones.

Grady Memorial Hospital is getting 604 new high-tech beds to replace all its old, dilapidated ones. Fritz Braves (left) rolls up a new bed as Nathaniel Banks rolls out the old.

Dr. Rhonda Scott, chief nursing officer, was exultant: "This is answered prayer!" Some of the beds coming in future shipments will have the brains of a computer and communicate about 30 programmed questions and commands that help in the care of patients who don't speak English.

The new beds are arriving in shipments of 52 per day. They were made possible by a Woodruff Foundation donation. Woodruff has promised $200 million over four years to replace Grady's antiquated equipment.

Each new bed was bar coded and inventoried before being moved to its room.

Dr. Rhonda Scott hugs R.N. Andrea Lewis as a new bed rolls in behind them. Grady engineer Ken Chamberlain disassembles an old bed to be moved out.

Grady engineer Alvin Chenault inspects the new beds as they are lined up in the hallway before being moved to the rooms. Grady is paying $8.3 million for the new beds.

Charles Spooner (from left), Jim Overton and Rodney Baskinbey pre-assemble a bed to be rolled upstairs to its new home. Grady's old beds are the poster children for the hospital's deteriorating equipment. At 16 years old, they had a reputation for occasionally wedging a patient in the gap between the mattress and the side railing.

Salomone watches a monitor in the trauma unit. "When people think of injured officers they think about [a] shooting ..." said Salomone, who also teaches surgery at Emory Medical School. "There are many other types of injuries they come in with. The vast majority are minor."

Dr. Scott checks out the new panel commands. Some of the beds will be able to weigh a patient and set off an alarm if a person is near to falling off.

Leah Cleary (right) plugs in the newly installed beds on the sixth floor as Dr. Rhonda Scott (left) and nurse Andrea Lewis look on.

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Grady Memorial Hospital is getting 604 new high-tech beds to replace all its old, dilapidated ones. Fritz Braves (left) rolls up a new bed as Nathaniel Banks rolls out the old.

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