I don’t know. I didn’t think anyone really had a handle on wheelchair breakdown and repair statistics. Then I ran across this study that was completed in 2009.

Here are some of the study highlights. Decide for yourself how the wheelchair industry is doing with product quality.

The study was conducted by Human Engineering Research Laboratories at the University of Pittsburgh and was supported by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

The study included 2213 participants. All had spinal cord injuries (paraplegia or quadriplegia) and all used some type of wheelchair for more than 40 hours per week.

The Study:

Wheelchair Repairs, Breakdown, and Adverse Consequences for People With Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury
Laura A. McClure, MPT, Michael L. Boninger, MD, Michelle L. Oyster, MS, Steve Williams, MD, Bethlyn Houlihan, MSW, MPH, Jesse A. Lieberman, MD, Rory A. Cooper, PhD
Rehabil 2009;90:2034-8

The Objectives:
To investigate the frequency of repairs that occurred in a 6 month period and the consequences of break-downs on wheelchair users living with spinal cord injuries (SCIs), and to determine whether certain wheelchair and subject characteristics are associated with an increased number of repairs and adverse consequences.

Results:
Within a 6-month period, 44.8% of full-time wheelchair users completed a repair, and 8.7% had an adverse consequence occur.

An Interesting Impact
Of participants surveyed, 48.1% of manual wheelchair users and 82.2% of power wheelchair users did not have a backup wheelchair. Often there are no alternatives for a wheelchair user. If a wheelchair becomes unusable, persons are trapped inside of their home. It is often impossible for a wheelchair user to maintain a functional back-up wheelchair. CMS (Medicare) and many other insurance companies will not fund back-up wheelchairs. Added to this, many users must wait 5 years to get a new chair from funders. By that time the old wheelchair is likely to be in such bad shape that it can not be safely used, even as a back-up.

The trickle-down of all of this is much more than “How reliable” a wheelchair is. When wheelchairs go down on a regular basis the wheelchair user often goes down with it. So this is really about lost mobility and independence, it’s about injuries, lost opportunities for employment and education, and it’s about costs to wheelchair users and society that far exceed the price of repairing a wheelchair.

Ziggi Landsman
VP Assistive Technology
United Spinal Association