I need to know how many "crash carts" there are in the US?  These are
the carts that hospitals have, that are set up for treating Heart
Attacks and other emergencies.

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Clarification of Question by crystal4290-ga on 10 Sep 2004 22:37 PDT

Is there anyone who wants to take a guess?  I think there are 27 at
Stanford, about one or two per floor....and some in the ER and others
the OR.  Not certain how you would get this information.....but I
really do need to know.  Right now I am guessing on average
21/hospital...but I do not really know.
Thanks for your help!

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 08 Oct 2004 11:29 PDT

Hi, Crystal.

I have racked my brain on this. Let me propose something.

I found this interesting quote:

"In the beginning, you had a medication nurse who used two carts to
administer drugs to 30 patients," she said. "That started changing in
the late '80s and early '90s, when medication nurses became primary
care nurses and their scope of responsibilities widened. At that point
there was probably one cart for every 10 patients. In 2001 when the VA
system started bar-coded charting systems and carts needed to support
computers, it became one cart for every four-to-six patients."

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BPC/is_9_27/ai_108692323

If, given the info in the quote above, we can assume one crash cart
for every six patients, and we can find an estimate of the number of
patients at any typical point in time, we'll have a wild-ankled guess
of the number of carts.

How does that sound? I hate to be so vague, but I honestly don't have
any better ideas at this point.

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Clarification of Question by crystal4290-ga on 08 Oct 2004 16:57 PDT

Hey Pinkfreud,

Thank you for the interesting thought....however I beleive you are
speaking about medcarts....and I am speaking about carts that are
specifically for a "code", or heart attack.  They are stocked with
defibrulators, and drugs to restart the heart, and endotracheal
tubes....really crisis items.  That is the figure that I need.  Does
that help to clarify, or did I misunderstand your information.

Crystal

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 08 Oct 2004 18:09 PDT

I haven't been able to turn up anything further. Your question will be
expiring soon; you may want to post a new question with the same text
so that Researchers can continue to work on this. It really seems
doable, and someone may be able to hit just the right combination of
search terms to find the info you need.

A bunch!  An average size outpatient surgery center probably has two
crash carts; one outside the OR, one in the recovery room.  Your
estimate for hospitals may be correct, I'm just not that familiar with
the hospital requirements.

I'm discussing specifically the "crash" cart....carts that are used
only for that purpose.  Usually they are red in color.  But, there are
a multitude of similar carts that are used for storage in the OR,
recovery rooms, and every where else.  An average outpatient surgery
center will have 6-8 of storage carts that are usually blue or white
in color.  There are over 3000 outpatient surgery centers in the US. 
I don't know # of hospitals in the US, but maybe this will help you
extrapolate.  Another possible resource would be to call the AAAHC or
JHACO, which are voluntary accredidation agencies and ask what they
require in the way of crash carts.  They may have a ratio of carts per
# of OR's or carts per recovery beds, or something like that.

Hope this helps a bit.

John