A recent Health Facilities Management Magazine article entitled Powering up to meet today’s health technology demands discusses in detail the impacts of burgeoning health care technology on health care facility power systems.

The consistently increasing technology changes are likely to ramp up even more throughout all health care facilities, not just in hospitals.  Clinical areas throughout health care facilities are affected.  However, the effects are felt in not just the clinical areas, but also the non-public areas such as laboratories, power plants, facilities services departments, materials management, and many other locations.

An accompanying Health Facilities Management Magazine article entitled Resilience for health care technology discusses the ability to withstand and recover from difficult conditions.  The growing incidence of utility grid power outages has convinced many health care systems of the importance of operating in island mode despite utility grid outages.  As the rapidly-growing and rapidly-changing technological impacts have a more mission-critical impact, it is likely that health care facilities needing to ensure resilience will go substantially beyond the CMS-mandated NFPA Life Safety Code requirements and place even more of this technology equipment on emergency power.

Questions related to this article may be directed to the author, David Stymiest, PE, CHFM, CHSP, FASHE, at DStymiest@ssr-inc.com.