The Glove Catcher Story
The Glove Catcher was invented and patented by Fabian Ballesteros, a Registered Nurse who, after working for various hospitals, in different medical arenas from medical surgical telemetry, oncology, pre and post operative care, step down unit, intensive care unit and orthopedic unit. Realized and recognized that gloves are wasted in large quantities in every hospital or clinic setting. Gloves that are never used are often placed in the waste basket. In fact, housekeeping in many hospital rooms, find waste baskets directly under the glove dispenser filled with unused clean glove. This is a huge cost to the hospitals and eventually patients.
In 2005, Fabian began researching the scope of the problem and found that the problem is widespread. He spoke to other nurses and housekeeping personnel he gather data spoke with hospital personal in every modality, from several different hospitals small and large and found that they encountered the same problem, huge waste in unused gloves on a daily basis. He took pictures and did research on existing glove dispensers. He found, that even the largest supply companies didn’t offer a solution.
He hired a patent attorney and found that there was nothing out there to solve this so work began on The Glove Catcher. In 2011, he was awarded Patent Number 8196775 for “The Glove Catcher.” The Glove Catcher is simply a tray fitted under the dispenser designed to catch trailing gloves. This way they are not contaminated by the floor and are easily accessible for the next user.
Scope Of The Problem
It’s estimated that in an average hospital or clinic room, that a box of gloves will be used daily, an average of 30 boxes per month. In a 24 patient bed setting, this could add up to 720 boxes per month. At $5.00 per box that’s a cost of $3600 dollars in a typical wing, half of which is thrown away. In a four-wing hospital, that’s an unnecessary cost of $7200.00 per month. The U.S. glove industry represents over $27 billion dollars in annual costs.
The Glove Catcher is the hybrid of glove dispensers. Some may claim the savings is only pennies. Not worth the over all cost. In $100 dollars there are 10,000 pennies. As a company whether big or small how would it not be beneficial to save $100 dollars extra every month. If you multiply that by 12 months you are looking at a $1200 savings, and that is assuming we are only talking about one, triple dispenser. Reflect, on the saving that will be obtained using The Glove Catcher putting 5 or 10 of them in use. The savings could reach into a few thousand dollars annually.
In most hospitals or clinical settings and areas of hygiene and strong infection control. In practice most rubber glove boxes placed in traditional glove dispensers give only about 50-65% of the gloves purchased. The remaining 35% usually fall to the ground or table making them unusable. The patented Glove Catcher with its unique, one of a kind design will allow you to use between 95-98% of the gloves provided in the box. This allows you to use close to 100% of the gloves purchased. The Glove Catcher allows your company to get what they paid for.