Lifts for Hospitals

Lifts for Hospitals


Installing Lifts for Hospitals and Healthcare Settings

The healthcare setting is a lift environment unlike any other. Its unique challenge is the continuous and diverse flow of doctors, patients and public between floors, and departments. Any sustained blockages to this flow could mean the difference between life and death to someone, so having the right vertical transport in place, providing appropriate access for the hospital population is critical.

Without lifts for hospitals, the health service would quickly come to a grinding halt. Ensuring an efficient flow and adequate access is, however, a complex task. Tower Lifts works within the healthcare setting, designing bespoke lift solutions, installing a range of vertical transport, and maintaining the performance of lifts in this specialist context.


What Kind of Lifts for Hospitals?

A hospital will probably require a range of lifts to fulfil the functions it requires:

  • Stretcher Lifts. Stretcher lifts are designed to transport patients on a stretcher along with accompanying staff and equipment. While these lifts can also be utilized for transporting general passengers, any handrails incorporated in their design should allow for an unobstructed space in the center of the lift, measuring 1400mm by 2400mm. The width of the door opening for these lifts should be 1400mm, and they must have a minimum capacity of 1600kg/20 persons.
  • Platform Lifts. Disabled people need to be able to access healthcare facilities easily. Many of the UK’s hospitals are housed in Victorian buildings offering a number of obstacle to access for someone in a wheelchair. Tower Lifts installs platform lifts where there are steps to navigate outside, a confined installation space, or split-level flooring.
  • Passenger Lifts. Used in the public facing areas for out-patients and visitors, and in the HCP facing areas for transporting clinicians, nurses, admin staff and porters. Hospital passenger lifts will usually be multiple, and large, with careful attention paid to access for people in wheelchairs, with impaired sight, or people suffering from dementia.
  • Goods Lifts. It’s not just people who need to be moved from one place to another in the hospital environment. Laundry, equipment, housekeeping goods and foodstuffs are constantly on the move. We install goods lifts, heavy goods lifts, and dumbwaiters to maintain the flow of goods and equipment.
  • Bed Lifts. These large capacity passenger lifts need to be able to bear 2,500kg in order to accommodate a bed and accompanying team, multiple wheelchairs, or multiple stretcher patients.

Special Guidance – Lifts for Hospitals

Designing and installing lifts for hospitals requires consultation with healthcare stakeholders and adherence to the Health Technical Memorandum 2016 which provides detailed guidance “on the design, installation and operation of specialised building and engineering technology used in the delivery of healthcare.” When working in a healthcare setting it’s also important to have an understanding of the CQC Standards of Care for bespoke design requirements pertaining to patients with specific conditions.

Maintenance and Servicing

Being able to rely on the performance of your lift is important in any context, but nowhere more so than in the hospital setting. Tower Lifts provides tailored maintenance contracts for hospitals, offering a comprehensive service across the entire range of lifts being used. This includes 24/7 emergency repairs.


Working With Tower Lifts

The Tower Lifts team has been designing and installing platform lifts, passenger lifts and goods lifts for hospitals since 2006. Our engineers have extensive experience of installing lifts in challenging architectural environments, and we are used to working with architects, developers, and specialist stakeholders.


Would you like to speak to a Tower Lifts engineer about installing lifts for a hospital setting? Call us today on 01525 601099.


Tower Lifts carry out design and installation on a varied range of lifts throughout the UK including:

Domestic Lifts • Food Lifts • Bespoke Platform Lifts • Service Lifts • Platform Lifts • Goods Lifts • Scenic Lifts • Heavy Duty / Car Lifts • Passenger Lifts • Dumbwaiter Lifts • MRL Lifts • Fire lifts • Residential Lifts • low-Headroom Lift