We are glad you found our National Directory which enables anyone to easily find existing places to borrow or donate wheelchairs, walkers, hospital beds, shower safety equipment and more, at no cost. This is a beta website and our team is dedicated to improving its data, functionality, and impact over time.

Why was this directory created?

After our team of volunteers launched Wheel It Forward – a new kind of community library that lends out durable medical equipment (DME), we began to receive inquiries from people all over the USA. They were looking to borrow or donate equipment – wheelchairs, knee scooters, hospital beds, rollators, shower safety equipment and more. Given that we are currently only serving Fairfield County Connecticut, we realized that it was difficult for people to find existing DME lending organizations in their local communities, to the extent they exist.

We also discovered that there are not a lot of lending organizations across America that are built to scale. Meaning –  they are not big enough, and they don’t use tools and technology  to meet the real opportunity of connecting the vast supply of lightly used equipment to the even greater demand for this life changing equipment that keeps people safe and mobile. The idea of creating a National Directory was born.

Additionally, we are aggregating data about DME lending organizations to understand better what is, and what is not going on in this space –  locally, regionally and nationally. Peter Drucker said “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”.  We subscribe to that thinking and plan on sharing what we learn with others. The goal is to make DME lending more impactful and over time, ubiquitous.

Why create and promote lending libraries?

Our primary goal is for the National Directory to provide local, up-to-date information to people looking to borrow or donate equipment, giving access to life changing equipment they often desperately need but can’t afford. Sometimes people can’t get the equipment they need simply because they are waiting for insurance or Medicare approval or because of supply chain issues. The Directory should raise awareness of lending organizations, many of which don’t even have their own websites. Lastly, the Directory will also help people looking to donate equipment so they can help their neighbors and the environment by not needing to throw it in landfills – the most common destination for equipment that is no longer needed.

What Inspired Us

Before launching Wheel It Forward our team was inspired by a DME lending organization in Israel called Yad Sarah. It was founded over 40 years ago and is run by 7,000 volunteers. Whether you are rich or poor in Israel, Jewish, Muslim or Christian – if you need medical equipment for any reason you would likely borrow it from Yad Sarah, at no cost. Yad Sarah has over 100 locations where people can borrow and donate equipment. Israel is the size of New Jersey – the equivalent of just 0.20% the geographic size of the USA. Among the many things that can be learned from Yad Sarah is that for DME lending to become ubiquitous you need a “community library” model that is located in every town – which is kind of what makes traditional book libraries so impactful.

Why Borrow or Donate

The Facts

The average piece of home medical equipment (also called durable medical equipment or DME) has a lifespan of over five years but is used for only four months. This leads to a large supply of lightly used DME that ends up in garages, attics or worse – landfills. At the same time, out-of-pocket costs for DME are proportionally three times higher than out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs. Combine that with high deductible insurance plans and this equipment is unaffordable for many, even in the middle class. We created this website to help people find places locally and across the country (to the extent they currently exist) where they can easily borrow or donate equipment.

Help Us

Please help us make this directory even more impactful for you and your community. Reach out to us if you know of an organization that is not listed, and let us know if you have ideas about data we should capture and how we can make this national directory better.

Please contact us contact us if have any questions or if we can help you in any way.