Sudden Power Outage - A Life-Threatening Risk for Any Healthcare Organization

The Battle for Life Is on

A tense, grim environment is prevailing in the operation theater. The patient under anesthesia is lying on the bed. A critical surgery with many inherent risks is being performed. Skilled surgeons are pushing hard to make the operation a success, and a sudden power outage happens in between. What will be the situation if the power cannot be restored within few seconds? What if the poor-quality hospital backup power supply system fails and are unable to give support?

It's Payback Time

It can be life-threatening for the patient and the hospital reputation will be at stake. The responsibility of the death will be on hospital management. The press, the media, the Government, and the patient family – everybody will come after them with accusations.

Roll the Ball in Your Court

Small business organizations even don't depend on local power supply, so it is really irresponsible of the hospitals who rely on local power supply and neglect the power backup management. What can a hospital management do to avoid such circumstances? Invest a little more and get a backup power supply with reliable performance. You can visit Lorbel Critical Power Services for best quality products in cheap price.

What History Says?

Sudden power failure and voltage instability have impacted healthcare industry in USA many times putting their reputation at stake and causing death tolls. Let's us checkout some of the biggest blackouts that have occurred in US in the past decades.

The Northeast blackout

Let's go back to 2003 – A year when the biggest ever blackout had taken place in USA affecting more than 45 million people. Have you ever bothered to check what was its impact in health care?

The report published by NCBI depicts: "Despite having emergency generators, four of 75 hospitals in the city were temporarily without electricity when the blackout occurred. The longest interruption was 2 hours and 45 minutes."

The officials of Jamaica hospital in Queens were accused of denying to shift the patients to other hospitals even after emergency power loss for hours.

Health care facilities underwent huge losses and their reputation was at stake. One year later, 6 hospitals reached bankruptcy.

The Southwest blackout

It was one of the biggest power outages due to human error to hit the Southwest of USA in 2011, impacting also hospitals. The officials failed to supply the power and meet demands of the patients when their limited emergency backup power ran out.

Derecho blackout

In 2012, the devastating storm "Derecho" disrupted the power supply in several states in USA. The most affected areas were Columbia, New Jersey, West Virginia, Pennysylvania, Maryland, Washington D.C. etc. Even the hospitals ran out of power for several days.

Think on what best efforts can be taken to deal with such situations.

Get Rid of the Old Generator

Many hospitals use on-site generators as backup power supply system but they should opt for upgraded options. Generator may not generate power at crucial situations because it functions slower. It takes time in supplying power to critical equipment, which can lead health-care organizations pay a hefty price. Imagine, in the middle of a crucial stage in a surgery, a power outage takes place. The generator takes a minute to restore electricity. Are you able to get the idea to what extent this poses a life-threat to the patient undergoing surgery. What about ICU patients?

Static UPS systems have been used in many health-care organizations, but these are capable to support small, non-motor production loads. The best type of UPS for health-care sector is rotary UPS as it is designed in a way to generate uninterruptible power supply. Moreover, it is cost-effecting and requires less maintenance.

Time to Give a Twist to Your Thought

Keeping aside the aspect that hospitals serve a noble cause, let's peep into another perspective for hospitals. Ultimately, profit is needed to run hospitals. When they undergo revenue loss, they compromise on the quality of service for patients. Some health organizations do it just to score more profitability. Ultimately, it leads to spoil of their reputation and also affects the business value.

"Health is wealth" and all of us arrange our possible best when it concerns health. We opt for best hospitals so that our loved ones receive best treatments in the supervision of best experts under best services. Our choice of the hospital comes from our reliance on that organization. When a hospital compromises on the quality of services, especially with emergency services, they play with our trust. Moreover, they put patient lives on risk, for whom they are responsible.

When health care units use poor backup power supply support system to cut cost, they also place costly equipment at stake. Those low-quality systems can damage important equipment. As much as the systems will be upgraded in a hospital, it will help them to get skilled staffs and greater number of patients. The more patients will be admitted, the more revenue will be generated.

A Final Takeaway

If you compromise on the must-have facilities, you commit treachery to your customers. It's a sin for any health care organization because it concerns the safety several lives. Think about this. Kindly invest and arrange the best-suited emergency power backup for your health care organization. Don't worry on your profit, it will grow for sure.

Russell Zahn is a 33-year-old Electrical Engineer from Georgia with over 7 yrs of exp in working with UPS systems, transformers,generators and other electrical equipment. When he is not working, he loves to share his knowledge through his articles.