Liquid Ingress into Intermediate Siderails of Hill-Rom TotalCare Beds May Cause Contamination

While repairing a Hill-Rom TotalCare bed, a biomedical technician at a member hospital discovered what appeared to be dried blood, excreta, and mold inside the device’s intermediate siderail. (The hospital has not definitively identified the substances.) Following the discovery, the facility identified other TotalCare beds in its inventory that contained foreign materials within their intermediate siderails.

All beds in the TotalCare series have two intermediate siderails—one on each side at the midsection of the bed frame—that house the user controls and indicators (e.g., bed position). * Although these siderails do not require scheduled maintenance, service personnel may need to open them occasionally to repair the components housed within. Each intermediate siderail has a removable cover designed to protect these components, as well as a foam gasket (along the cover’s upper edge) designed to limit liquid ingress. The “TotalCare Bed System Service Manual” (revision “man112”) directs service personnel to...