Can hospitals ever be fully prepared for massive power outages?

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Damaging storms don’t discriminate. Even hospitals in the path of historic Hurricane Sandy across the eastern U.S. suffered widespread power loss. This unexpected occurrence highlights the importance of reliable power generation for hospitals.
In 2012, the televised images of newborns and critical care patients transferred from one hospital to another in New York City demonstrated how important hospitals are to society. And, it shows how critical it is to have UPS systems in place to facilitate transfer of patients in case of natural disasters.

This is why International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards and other regulations require hospitals to install UPS equipment in critical care departments such as emergency rooms, operating rooms, and intensive units and baby care units.
The thought behind this requirement is that UPS solutions can provide enough run-time to implement backup procedures for alternate power generation. Or if necessary, UPS equipment can give hospital administrators and healthcare professionals enough time to relocate critical services to another hospital.

Downtime turns into downturn in funds

There’s another aspect to hospitals. They need money to run. When they experience revenue loss, both the quality of the service they provide to their patients and their overall business value is affected. This was demonstrated during the August 2003 blackout. Not only were 45 million people in parts of Canada and eight US states impacted by power loss, but many healthcare facilities lost considerable sums of money and suffered from tarnished reputations. In fact, six hospitals went bankrupt one year later.
Most healthcare facilities have migrated to an almost completely paperless or electronic process. Two of the main benefits of adopting electronic processes in hospitals are operational efficiency and staff productivity. The lack of dependable and robust UPS solutions put hospitals and critical health facility departments at risk. But, reliable back-up power solutions for healthcare systems enable providers to protect people and assets, as well as provide clean power even under the most difficult of circumstances.
During any system downtime, manual processes take effect. This can create more work to an already stressed staff striving to maintain the same level of service. As a result, the risk of medication and diet errors are increased. That’s why when considering UPS offerings, hospitals must only look at highly reliable, proven UPS solutions designed to conform to Joint Commission certifications and government regulatory requirements.

Any healthcare provider can attain peace of mind when it comes to addressing power loss issues in clinical settings. But only technology providers with expertise in building and configuring single-phase and three-phase UPS solutions for healthcare applications can meet the highest standards of healthcare providers.