A healthcare utility management assurance program is offered by a provider of industrial power solutions to healthcare organizations with three goals in mind: ensuring that a hospital or a similar care facility has electrical power infrastructure that meets the latest rules and regulations for healthcare facilities; ensuring that such equipment is properly maintained in order for the facilities to carry on as usual in the event of electrical equipment failure and power outages; and ensuring that these services are offered at a lower price than would be possible through the hiring of in house technicians.
For hospitals, the primary benefit of a healthcare utility management assurance program is that it allows management to rest assured that fatalities, fines, and lawsuits will not result from improperly installed or improperly maintained electrical equipment, and that measures to prevent these things are being retained at the lowest possible price. But there are also several sub benefits that help to create this assurance, four of which we list and discuss below.
1. Proper Switch Gear Maintenance
Nothing is more important to the reliability of backup generators than properly maintained switch gear, which is responsible for transferring a facility's electricity supply from commercial power to generator power in the event of an outage. Hospitals require closed circuit automatic transfer switches"”also known as "make before break" switches"”to ensure that their electricity supply remains uninterrupted in the event of outages.
2. Thorough Generator Testing
In addition to ensuring that generators are properly serviced, a utility management assurance program also ensures that they will operate in the proper capacity during outages, a determination often achieved through load bank testing, which usually requires the temporary presence of an industrial load bank, equipment that would be supplied by the industrial power solutions provider that facilitates the assurance program.
3. Examination of Electrical Infrastructure to insure that it meets Compliance
In addition to properly maintaining emergency power generators, hospitals must also ensure that their general electrical infrastructure remains current with the latest rules and regulations for healthcare facilities, a full-time job that is best left to industrial power professionals, who perform utility management reviews of joint commission standards to ensure that areas for improvement are adequately identified and addressed in a timely manner.
4. Less Expensive than Hiring In House Professionals
For a large hospital, the breadth of concerns associated with proper electrical equipment maintenance and compliance could justify the creation of an in house department dedicated specifically to those concerns. But the payroll increase of such a move would make it financially impractical in tough economic times, hence the advantage of outsourcing the aforementioned needs through a utility management assurance program. To learn more about utility management assurance programs, contact an provider of industrial power solutions.
