Most medium-sized hospitals experience an average of 20 power-related disruptions per year, often lasting only a few cycles in duration, and therefore hard to detect.
However, industry experts believe that approximately 20 percent of these disruptions can be prevented with appropriate power quality programs, real-time monitoring and proper mitigation devices. (Source: Rockwell Automation).
Yet most hospitals have not put in place appropriate monitoring systems to analyze and prevent future occurrences. Why? Many reasons exist. Often, most operations teams are spread thin focusing mostly on day to-day maintenance, without a detailed understanding of power quality issues. These same operations teams are often unaware of the available technologies and the proper design of solutions. Much like their hospital practitioner brethren who often rely on information supplied and recommended by pharmaceutical OEMs, operations must collaborate with OEM and power quality technology partners to solve these complex problems.
Like other industries, poor power quality can impact hospital operations and delivery of patient care. Equipment such as imaging, electrosurgical, and dialysis machines can malfunction, fail, or be damaged. Disruptions can create negative consequences - impacting patient treatment and scheduling, reduction in hospital billings, maintenance and replacement costs, and even costlier compliance issues.
A disruption impacting operations and billing can cost a
hospital $100 per minute in downtime and lost billing. In fact, a 2-hour disruption impacting a single MRI can cost the hospital over $125K USD. Reducing these disruptions increases efficiency and utilization rates for both machines and people.
To better understand the issue, we need to understand also how power is delivered from the energy producer. Hospitals use the same power grid as other facilities, and the backup generators are only used when utility power is lost. The generator does not start instantly, casuing deep sags in power, and potentially disrupting or damaging other equipment.
Critical devices are powered using a double conversion uninterruptible power supply. Double conversion UPSs convert all incoming AC to DC, apply this DC to a battery bank, and convert the DC to AC for distribution to critical patient care areas. While immune to voltage sags, constant conversion UPSs create other issues. Energy is lost in the conversion and battery charging processes. The input draws harmonic currents, which may affect other devices on the utility AC supply, or cause the backup generator to trip or overheat. The AC output may contain harmonics as a result of solid state conversion. Mitigating these power quality issues will reduce the hospital's operating expenses and increase the lifetimes of critical and expensive equipment.
AHigh speed switching on the grid can cause short term voltage disruptions that can impact hospital equipment - fitted with very sensitive electronics and costly to repair and replace. Monthly testing of hospital generators, mandated by regulatory authorities, can also cause damage or disruptions to unprotected equipment.
The healthcare industry faces challenges due to regulatory constraints. Many state laws prevent hospitals from using closed transition transfer switches that will reduce the disruption when the backup generator is tested. By federal law, hospitals cannot use load banks for full load generator testing, so have to leave vulnerable equipment running and on-line. Due to possible damage to high cost equipment, most hospitals turn the equipment off anyway for several hours to conduct the test, resulting in NFPA and JCAHO compliance issues. This downtime impacts delivery of needed services and increases costs.
Although the issues are complex and consequences potentially substantial, solutions exist today to monitor and engineer remedial actions. Cloud-based, scalable, industrial hardened SCADA systems allow remote monitoring of power. Monitoring equipment and corrective devices provide a cost effective and easy to implement solution. Correcting hospital power quality has substantial impact to the bottom line, and may even save lives. The best part - solutions are available today.
