About Hospital Visitor Beds

We are the UK’s longest established designers and suppliers of high performance space and cost saving Visitor guest beds and wall beds for Hospitals and Hospices and have set the benchmark for the sector.

Who Are We?

Hospital Visitor Beds is the new name for the Healthcare Division of Golden Plan Ltd, established more than 40 years ago, which specialises in designing and supplying expertly engineered, high performance, mobile ‘GLIDEAWAY’® Visitor Guestbeds and fixed ‘WISKAWAY’® and ‘NEAT-A-WARD’® Wallbeds, to the UK Healthcare Sector.

We are award winning specialists and are now the ‘go to’ choice for foldaway Visitor beds for Hospitals and Hospices in the UK.

Our Guiding Design Principles:

"To combine safety, durability and comfort with strong, simple design and continuous product improvement."

Our Story

We started in the early 1980’s as wall bed specialists, with a range of different heavy-duty wall beds.

Having seen just how appalling the available choice of (mainly non-compliant and ‘domestic’) visitor beds was, at the time, we realised that our wall beds would make an ideal Visitor bed and set about pioneering their use in Hospitals and Hospices.

By the early 1990’s we had developed and tested what is now our award winning range of wall-fixed high performance, space and cost saving, ‘WISKAWAY’® Visitor Wallbeds, engineered specifically for the Hospital and Hospice Visitor bed application and we launched this range in the Summer of 1993, at Addenbrookes Hospital, in Cambridge – (see also Case Study No.1).

Our ‘WISKAWAY’® Visitor Wallbeds literally revolutionised the overnight Visitor facilities on the Children’s Wards at Addenbrookes Hospital. They have since proved a huge success, nationwide and have been specified for most of the new Children’s Hospitals built since then, as well as for Children’s and Adult Wards in general Hospitals and for Hospices, all over the country.

We subsequently turned our attention to the mobile Hospital and Hospice guest bed market and, in 1995, together with Southampton General Hospital, developed and launched, what is now our award winning, high performance ‘GLIDEAWAY’® Visitor Guestbed, which took the Hospital and Hospice guest bed market ‘by storm’ and is now the guest bed of choice, nationwide – (see also Southampton General Hospital Case Study No. 6).

Improving Patient Wellbeing, Speeding Up Recovery and Shortening Stay Times

Our products are intended to reduce staff workload and help keep families together during stressful hospital stays, by enabling patients to have someone they know and trust stay overnight in Hospital/Hospice with them. This is widely acknowledged to reduce anxiety and emotional stress all round, speed up patient recovery, shorten inpatient stays and thus save significant costs.

A 2ft. 6ins. ‘Horizontal’ ‘WISKAWAY’® 6000H Visitor Wallbed, with Matching Top Box

Our Visitor Beds Don’t Just Save Space - They Save Money Too!

By specifying our Visitor wall beds and guest beds, our Hospital and Hospice customers are able to offer practical, comfortable, efficient, world class, overnight accommodation to their visitors, whilst benefiting from reduced Manual Handling, a reduction in staff workload and substantial cost savings.

AN INVESTMENT RATHER THAN A COST

Our Hospital and Hospice Visitor Wallbeds and Guestbeds save money in the following 4 ways:-

Visitors can sleep on the Ward near, or right next to the patient. There is no need to provide costly separate visitor accommodation.
Our Visitor beds are extremely safe, smooth and easy to use and save staff effort, time and operating costs.
Being able to have someone they know and trust stay with them in Hospital, is widely acknowledged to reduce stress and anxiety in patients, speeding up their recovery and shortening inpatient stay times. A single night’s stay avoided, represents a saving of hundreds of pounds and sometimes much more.
The exceptionally long service lives of our Visitor beds, during which no replacement beds are required, or associated costs are entailed, can result in very substantial cost savings and make our Visitor beds unbeatable value for money.

Subject to periodic servicing (we recommend just once every 5 years) our ‘WISKAWAY’® Visitor Walbeds are designed for a 25 year-plus service life and our ‘GLIDEAWAY’® Visitor Guestbeds for a 20 year-plus service life.

Our Hospital and Hospice visitor beds pay for themselves many times over, during their impressively long service lives.

Manufacturing

Country of origin

We make all our products either in the UK, or in the EU and produce our Visitor beds for each specific project, so we can be flexible on dimensions and special customer requirements.

Lead Times

Typical lead times for our ‘GLIDEAWAY’® Visitor Guestbeds and ‘NEAT-A-WARD’ Patient Wallbeds, if not in stock, are 4-6 weeks and for our ‘WISKAWAY’® Visitor Wallbeds, which we make to order, they are normally 10-12 weeks, though we can usually improve on these, if necessary.

Special Requests

Because we manufacture our own products, we are usually able to accommodate special requirements.

Carbon Footprint

Every effort goes into producing products with the lowest possible carbon footprint and, over the very long service lives of our products, they have a lower carbon footprint, compared to ‘similar‘ products, when evaluated over the same period.

After Sales Service

We offer a comprehensive spares/after sales service as well as optional periodic servicing on our products (we recommend just once every 5 years) and also an installation and re-location service for our wall beds.

John Miller

Founder & Managing Director

Meet John Miller

Our founder and Managing Director, John Miller, is the UK’s leading expert on the design and use of space and cost saving Visitor beds in Hospitals and Hospices.

Under his guidance, Hospital Visitor Beds has transformed the heavy duty guest bed market, with its award winning ‘GLIDEAWAY’® Guestbeds, which are now the products of choice in Hospitals and Hospices nationwide and has pioneered the use of high performance, heavy duty wall beds in UK Hospitals and Hospices, with its world class ‘WISKAWAY’® and ‘NEAT-A-WARD’® wall beds.