POWER QUALITY
The importance of
uninterrupted power s with all hospitals, power continuity is of critical importance for patient safety, so when Queensland’s Hervey Bay Hospital was designing the new Emergency Department (ED) building in 2017, there was an opportunity to implement a new power distribution solution that would meet the expectations of a modern hospital. When the new ED was built, the hospital required a system that would deliver power to sensitive, critical equipment at all times without exception.
18
HOSPITAL + HEALTHCARE
“We did have back-up generators, but our biggest issue was when you do your monthly generator testing there’s a changeover time, and for an emergency department that was not acceptable by today’s standards,” according to Darren Atkins, Manager of ICT Network Infrastructure for Queensland Health. The main impacts of losing power would have been on operating theatres, ICUs, renals and the emergency department.
“It’s about redundancy, but it’s also about our ability to service the equipment without creating impacts on our clinical services, which is what we always look for in all of our design,” said David Manzini, Manager of Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service’s Building, Engineering and Maintenance Service division, whose jurisdiction includes Hervey Bay Hospital.
“It’s all about risk mitigation,” Manzini said. “They’re all critical services and they really struggle if they’re in the middle of a procedure while that power’s clunking in and out while they’re ventilating patients, dialysing patients. They can’t afford that clinical risk. This means that we have to delay testing and maintenance if there’s someone on an operating table or if they advise us that there are clinical risks of losing power at the time.”
Another consideration was the legislative requirement to switch off mains power to test the hospital generators on a monthly basis.
Manzini and Atkins engaged electrical engineer Charles Webster to audit the available design options provided by an
HEALTHCARE TECHNOLOGY SUPPLIERS GUIDE 2024
hospitalhealth.com.au