Delivering to Alaska

Dolphin FIS Therapy Surfaces in Alaska

There is no truck route from the lower 48 to Alaska that does not cross Canada, and for most freight that is not the route anyway. What reaches Alaska reaches it by sea or by air: containers sailing north from Puget Sound to the Port of Alaska at Anchorage and to the Southeast ports, and air cargo for everything that cannot wait for a sailing or cannot get there any other way. Then, for a great many Alaskan addresses, there is a second leg after that one, because Anchorage is where the freight lands, not where the patient lives.

So the honest headline for this page is a lead time measured in weeks rather than days, and the useful thing we can do is tell you which weeks and why, before you plan a discharge around them. We would rather lose an order to a supplier who promises faster than have a family in Bethel or Kotzebue arrange a homecoming around a date we invented. Dolphin FIS and Fluid Immersion Simulation are registered trademarks of Joerns Healthcare LLC; we are an authorized dealer and we are not Joerns.

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Freight reaching Alaska by sea

Coming home from

A tertiary hospital in Anchorage

The state’s complex care is concentrated in one metro. Patients are routinely flown in from across Alaska for treatment and flown home afterwards, which means the discharging hospital and the delivery address are often a thousand miles and two freight legs apart.
A regional hospital serving a hub community

Fairbanks, Juneau, Bethel, Nome, Kotzebue, Dillingham, Sitka and Kodiak serve wide regions. A hub hospital is the end of the scheduled-flight network for the villages around it and the start of the bush leg home.
A village clinic on the Alaska Native health system

Many communities are served by a clinic staffed by community health aides with physician support at a distance. Equipment arriving into a village arrives without a technician alongside it, and the plan has to account for that from the outset.
A private home on the road system

Anchorage, the Mat-Su Valley, the Kenai Peninsula and Fairbanks are reachable by truck once freight has landed, and behave much like a mainland delivery from that point on.
A private home off the road system

Reached by air year-round and by barge in the ice-free season. This is where the schedule stops being about us and starts being about sailings, weather and daylight.

Going home to Alaska

Work backwards from the sailing, not forwards from the order. For an address on the road system — Anchorage, Wasilla, Palmer, Soldotna, Homer, Fairbanks — the journey is an ocean leg to Anchorage and then a road leg, and the variable is which sailing the freight makes. Miss one and you are waiting for the next, which is not the same kind of delay as missing a truck. For an address off the road system, add a second leg after Anchorage, by scheduled air freight or by barge, and the barge is seasonal: the western and northern coastal and river communities are served during the ice-free months and not outside them. Juneau is worth naming on its own, because it is a state capital with no road connection to the rest of North America and everything arriving there arrives by water or by air.

The other thing to plan for is what "setup" means here, because it does not mean the same thing it means in Ohio. In much of Alaska nobody is going to arrive alongside the shipment. The realistic arrangement is that a family member, a home health nurse or clinic staff do the setup, with us and the manufacturer’s documentation walking them through it, and with the frame measured and confirmed before anything leaves the mainland rather than after it lands. We will say clearly which of those applies to your address before you order. We are not going to advertise white-glove delivery to a village we cannot send a person to.

Homes here, and what fits in them

Once the freight is at the door, an Alaskan home is generally not a difficult delivery. What is difficult is the door’s relationship to everything else. Houses in many communities are built on piles above permafrost with an exterior stair and an arctic entry, and the arctic entry — a small unheated vestibule — is exactly the place a delivery gets left and exactly the wrong place for it. Joerns states the system’s storage and shipping conditions as an ambient 50 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. An arctic entry, an unheated warehouse at a hub airport, or a pallet on an airstrip apron in February is far below the bottom of that range, and the handover has to be to a person who takes the equipment into the heated part of the building.

Power is the second consideration and it is not the same as it is down south. Many rural Alaskan communities run on an isolated diesel microgrid, and an outage in a community like that is not a matter of a crew driving out from the next town. Joerns states that the battery back-up supplies the control unit for approximately twelve hours when power fails, and recharges once power returns. Twelve hours is a genuinely useful margin against a village outage. It is not a plan for a prolonged one, and the care team should know what the fallback is before the system is in the house rather than after.

Good to know in Alaska

The battery is why the control unit is the slow half: Joerns describes the back-up as a sealed 12 VDC rechargeable battery. Batteries are regulated cargo by air, so the control unit moves under handling and documentation rules that a 22 lb mattress does not. On a route with an air leg, that is a real scheduling factor and we raise it at the quote rather than after the booking.
Barge access to much of the state is seasonal: Coastal and river communities in western and northern Alaska are served by barge during the ice-free months and by air the rest of the year. Ordering in October for a village on the Kuskokwim is a different proposition from ordering in June, and the difference is months, not days.
Juneau has no road to anywhere: The state capital is reached by ferry or by air. It is the clearest illustration of why an Alaskan page cannot simply say "we ship nationwide" — there are places on the state highway map that no highway from outside Alaska connects to.
The return leg is the same journey backwards: A rental has to come home. From an off-road-system community that means the next barge or a paid air leg, on the same seasonal calendar as the delivery. It is worth understanding at the start of a rental rather than discovering at the end, and it is part of what we quote.

Communities we deliver to

Anchorage · The Matanuska-Susitna Valley · Fairbanks and the Interior · The Kenai Peninsula · Juneau · Ketchikan · Sitka · Petersburg and Wrangell · Prince of Wales Island · Haines and Skagway · Kodiak · Valdez and Cordova · Bethel and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta · Nome and the Seward Peninsula · Kotzebue and the Northwest Arctic · Utqiaġvik and the North Slope · Dillingham and Bristol Bay · Unalaska and the Aleutians

Most requested in Alaska

Standard Dolphin FIS Mattress

One 22 lb mattress and one 10 lb control unit is the smallest complete system there is. On a route where every additional piece is another freight decision and possibly another sailing, the simplest configuration is the one that arrives soonest.

$X,XXX–$Y,YYY/mo

Low-Profile Dolphin FIS System

Joerns describes a foam safety cell on Low Profile models as protection against bottoming out during a power failure that outlasts the battery. In a community on an isolated diesel grid, where a crew cannot simply drive out from the next town, that is a specification worth asking the care team about.

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Pediatric & Crib Dolphin FIS Systems

Children from across Alaska are treated in Anchorage and flown home. The crib and pediatric surfaces are the smallest and lightest items we ship, which is exactly what you want when the last leg of the journey is a small aircraft.

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Discharge coming up

Coming home from hospital in the next day or two?

Send us a note with the discharge date and the surface the care team has recommended, whether the patient is leaving a hospital, a rehabilitation facility, a skilled nursing facility or hospice care. What can arrive in time depends on stock, the freight lane and the hour you call, so the earlier the better.

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Nearby areas we deliver to

West Coast Hawai‘i All areas →

Equipment rentals in Alaska: questions

Can you actually deliver to Alaska, and how long does it take?

Yes, and the honest answer on timing is weeks rather than days. There is no ground lane from the lower 48 that does not cross Canada, so the system travels by sea to Anchorage or the Southeast ports, or by air. Addresses on the road system add a road leg after that; addresses off it add an air or barge leg, and barge service to western and northern communities is seasonal. Tell us the delivery community and we will work out the actual route and the actual weeks before you plan a discharge around it.

Why would the control unit and the mattress ship differently?

Because of the battery. Joerns describes the control unit’s back-up as a sealed 12 VDC rechargeable battery, and batteries are regulated cargo when they travel by air. The 22 lb mattress is ordinary freight; the control unit is not. On any Alaskan routing with an air leg that affects handling, documentation and sometimes timing, and it is something we raise at the quote stage rather than let you find out about later.

Will someone come and set it up?

On the road system — Anchorage, the Valley, the Kenai, Fairbanks — a conventional delivery and setup is usually arrangeable. Off the road system, realistically, no: nobody travels with the freight, and we are not going to advertise otherwise. What happens instead is that the frame is measured and confirmed before anything ships, the system arrives with the manufacturer’s documentation, and we walk a family member, a home health nurse or clinic staff through the setup. We will tell you which of the two applies to your address before you commit.

Our village is served by barge. Does it matter when we order?

It matters more than almost anything else. Coastal and river communities in western and northern Alaska are served by barge in the ice-free months, and by air the rest of the year, which is a different cost and a different schedule. If the need is clinical and immediate, the air route exists and we will quote it. If there is time, ordering with the season in mind can change both the cost and the wait substantially.

It is well below freezing here. Is it safe for the equipment to travel?

It travels, but the handover matters. Joerns states storage and shipping conditions of 50 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and an unheated hub warehouse, an airstrip apron or an arctic entry in winter is a long way below that floor. The equipment should be received by a person and brought into the heated part of the building rather than left in the entry. If nobody can meet the freight on the day it lands, tell us in advance so the routing accounts for it.

What happens at the end of a rental?

The same journey in reverse, on the same schedule. From an off-road-system community that means the next barge or a paid air leg. We quote that at the start rather than at the end, because a return leg that arrives as a surprise at the end of a difficult year is not an acceptable way to run this.

Book a rental delivered to Alaska

Tell us the address, the date and what the care team recommended. We confirm stock, the monthly rate and a delivery window by phone.

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