Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA) owns 13 hospitals in eastern Tennessee and southwest Virginia.  Jennifer Feathers and Maccarena Blackhart, the Healthcare Sales Representative and Designer respectively, at Workspace Interiors, worked with Missy Whitehead, the Corporate Interior Designer for MSHA, on a project at Johnson City Medical Center (JCMC), the largest hospital in the MSHA system.

They broke ground on a new surgery tower this summer, and to match the newness of the surgery areas they decided to upgrade their patient rooms as well. MSHA wants to standardize on just one recliner, and so will gradually replace all the recliners in the 500+ bed JCMC. The Infection Control specialists identified 116 patient-room recliners and side chairs that need to be replaced immediately. 

When Nurture introduced the Empath recliner, Workspace Interiors purchased four in total, two to be "showroom" recliners and two to be "customer-loaner" recliners. For this project, Kelly Register, Nurture's Healthcare Specialist in the Southeast region, came to JCMC to present the research and insights behind Empath to both infection control and nurse managers, and demonstrate the various features of the chair. The Empath "loaners" were then left at JCMC for the nurses on each floor to try out for a week.

The ease of use for the patients as well as the nurses was key to the nursing teams falling in love with Empath. They could tell that serious research and thought had gone into the design of the chair, and remarked how the ease of operation and the intuitive mechanisms of the chair would simplify life for their recovering, ill, and elderly patients. The central-locking casters and the dual flip-down arms were huge hits as well - their patient rooms are very small, so these were crucial!

MSHA had already standardized on Steelcase and Nurture products for their hospitals, because of the quality of the products and the service provided by Workspace Interiors. MSHA has used both Mitra and Mineral recliners at their other facilities, so they compared the three recliners internally to confirm they were getting the most "bang for their buck". Out of over 200 nurse and staff evaluations, the Empath recliner was the clear winner, followed by the Mineral. JCMC plans to replace all the patient room recliners with the Empath over the next two years, along with several other potential upgrades, including Nurture case goods, to the patient room as well.