Custom pass-through cabinet for crisis capacity sterilization room
A unique solution for extraordinary circumstanaces
Last week, North Kansas City Hospital and Turner Construction Company approached Shield Casework about rapidly developing a personal protective equipment (PPE) custom pass-through cabinet for an area of the hospital that will use ultra violet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) for sterilizing medical equipment.
The room would serve in part as a crisis capacity strategy, ensuring the continued availability of N95 filtering facepiece respirators (FFRs) during the COVID-19 outbreak and global supply shortage.
Building a better box
Shield Casework's standard pass-through cabinets are designed to help improve clinical workflows. Proprietary and seamless construction using acrylic solid surface allows Shield to offer a lifetime warranty on these new alternatives to stainless steel pass-through cabinets. Acrylic solid surface is a durable, microbial-resistant, bleach-cleanable, and non-porous material used regularly in healthcare.
North Kansas City Hospital wanted to create a dropbox-style pass-through for depositing used N95 FFRs – like a library book return or post office mail drop – that also establishes a controlled buffer between a corridor and an ante room.
The bagged masks are then retrieved from the pass-through in the ante room, processed in an adjacent dirty room, sterilized in the new UVGI sterilization room, and finally restocked in a clean room on sterile shelving. Here’s a look at this 100% acrylic solid surface custom pass-through cabinet that went from concept to operational in one week - go team!
This 100% acrylic solid surface custom pass-through cabinet went from concept to operational in just one week.
Crisis capacity strategies
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides an overview for decontamination and reuse of FFRs using contingency and crisis capacity strategies.
In addition, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration provides a list of all current Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) on their website, which on March 2, 2020 declared “that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use of personal respiratory protective devices during the COVID-19 outbreak.”
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