Consumer Agency Finds Most Adult Bedrail Deaths Are Among Those 60 and Older

SEOOKE.com: NYT - WASHINGTON — The Consumer Product Safety Commission on Thursday released a review of bedrail deaths and injuries of adults as it considered how to address potential hazards associated with the products.

Using data from death certificates and hospital emergency room visits, the report cited 155 deaths involving bedrails from January 2003 to this past September. Sixty-one percent of the bedrail deaths occurred at home. About a quarter occurred at a nursing home or an assisted living facility, the report said. 

It also found that nearly half of those who died in bedrail accidents had medical problems — dementia, heart disease and Parkinson’s disease among them. Almost 37,000 people were injured in bedrail accidents and treated at hospital emergency rooms from 2003 through 2011, the agency said. Consumer safety advocates, who have long campaigned for federal regulators to study bedrail deaths and injuries, called the report an important first step. But they said that it failed to address several issues, including jurisdictional matters concerning which agency has responsibility for some types of bedrails: the Consumer Product Safety Commission or the Food and Drug Administration. 

The advocates said that the question of oversight remained one of the biggest problems with bedrails, because there are unanswered technical questions about which rails are medical devices and which are consumer products. 

The report did not review bedrail designs for potential problems. The consumer agency has pointed out that the makers of bedrails are usually not identified on death certificates or doctors’ notes. 

In response to a lack of coordination between federal regulators, Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, called for the consumer and drug agencies, as well as the Federal Trade Commission, to form a task force to address the regulation of bedrails and bed systems, specifically rails that blur the line between being medical devices and consumer products. 

“We need a national task force dedicated to addressing any regulatory gaps and protecting these vulnerable patients from preventable bedrail injuries,” Mr. Markey said in a statement.