Livengood Medical to break out in 2011

LOVELAND – It’s taken some time, but Joseph Livengood, M.D., thinks his company, Livengood Medical, is finally hitting its stride.

In January and again earlier this month, Livengood Medical launched new products designed to perform in taxing environments while ensuring “patient-centric” care away from the traditional hospital bed and its attached octopus of medical apparatus.

In January, Livengood rolled out its Mobile Patient Care Platform, to help address emergency room overcrowding. The two-foot-square mobile platform contains all the equipment and hookups needed to provide patient care in a hallway, conference room or other alternative location when the emergency room is full.

In February, Livengood launched its Disaster/Mass Casualty Incident Platform that incorporates many of the same designs but includes a unique wheel design to allow for easy maneuverability across uneven terrain.

Livengood took both platforms – which he refers to as “mobile patient care environments” – to the Emergency Nurses Association Leadership Conference, held Feb. 18 and 19 in Portland, Ore., to spread the word among the health-care professionals who know the needs of patients best.

And for Livengood, part of the business continues to be education.

“I can show them 10 things they never thought of that are now in one place,” he said.

Livengood, a former trauma surgeon with Surgical Specialties of the Rockies, got started developing mobile medical platforms with the help of his wife, Amy, a former nurse at Poudre Valley Hospital, in 2003. He left his practice in 2005 and started patenting, manufacturing and selling what he then called the Livengood Platform.

Since then, Livengood notes there have “been many changes” in his product, which started as sort of an expanded hospital IV pole.

“It’s been a somewhat unplanned progression to different markets in health care,” he said. “But our longer-term plan always was to develop products for more and more complicated patients, and we are now at that stage.”

New approach

Livengood said the products his company is developing and marketing are bringing a new approach to the traditional architecture and design of hospitals.

“Everybody is locked into the concept of the patient in a bed, and they don’t design for mobility,” he said. “We see ourselves as an architectural element. We’re not just a piece of equipment. The way we consolidate the equipment and integrate the equipment affects how you can design the room itself.”

Livengood said the platforms he’s designed focus on being “patient-centric,” meaning they give the patient as much mobility as possible. “When we say patient-centric, it’s about when a patient goes to lunch or the bathroom, their care equipment goes with them,” he said.

And the equipment – which can cost between $5,000 and $7,000 per platform depending on its configuration – can actually save the hospital or nursing facility money through its operational efficiencies and delaying the need to expand an emergency room.

“Almost every hospital across the board has issues with overcrowding,” he said. “With our platform, you can put the equipment of two intensive care units on it. We can take care of two patients on one platform.”

Livengood Medical, which moved its assembly operations to a space at the Fort Collins-Loveland Airport business park in November, is selling its products all over the United States and has found local buyers at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland and Craig and Parker Adventist hospitals in Denver.

The latest niche for Livengood Medical is emergency preparedness, and the company’s products are now part of the state preparedness response system for South Carolina and Arizona.

The company, which has lined up a vast distributorship network, recently added Grainger, a company that specializes in emergency preparedness equipment.

“That’s huge for us,” he said. “They’ve become the industry leader as far as having all the products you would need. It gives us a huge amount of credibility.”

Livengood said it all points to 2011 looking like a breakout year for the company, which now employs six people.

“I do think this is our year,” he said. “Especially with emergency preparedness, it does give us the ability to say 2011 is our launching year.”

Steve Porter covers health care for the Northern Colorado Business Report. He can be reached at 970-232-3147 or at sporter@ncbr.com.

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