Health Care Facilities Are Energy-Intensive Environments
In today's competitive health care environment,
hospitals and medical centers are challenged both to reduce operating
costs and to improve patient care and comfort. Health care energy
costs are staggering—medical facilities spend $5.3 billion
annually on energy, and rank second only to the food service industry
in intensity of energy usage.
Many health care facilities have aging, poorly insulated
buildings that are subject to air infiltration and heat loss and
gain. These buildings often house older equipment that consumes
more energy and requires a higher level of maintenance than new
equipment. Yet rising health care costs and competition for patient
health care dollars make it difficult to prioritize the capital
investments needed to reduce energy consumption and operations and
maintenance costs.
The Good News?
Hospital systems are finding that investing in energy savings
is a great prescription for cost containment—with fast paybacks,
ongoing returns, and no compromising of patient care. Through performance-based
contracting, some are realizing savings with no upfront capital
outlay at all. Performance-based
contracting enables hospitals and medical centers to use project-related
savings to pay for energy improvements. These improvements are reducing
their energy consumption and operating costs by 25% or more.
Typical energy improvements to health care facilities range from
energy management systems and high-efficiency lighting to air handling
units, boilers, chillers, efficient motors, and variable speed drives.
For more on energy-efficient
building components, visit the Building Toolbox section of this
site. Contracts for comprehensive performance-based retrofits are
often structured to target the most inefficient systems first, so
that other capital repairs and improvements—such as deferred
maintenance, repairs to power plants, boiler or chiller housings,
or the installation of cogeneneration or distributed generation
technologies—can be funded by initial project savings.
Retrofitting old, inefficient systems not only reduces energy
consumption and costs, but also overall maintenance needs and related
costs. In health care facilities, most maintenance work orders are
unplanned, conducted on an as-needed basis. The combination of new
equipment, scheduled maintenance, and energy management systems
that provide constant monitoring and control of energy operations
helps facility managers to reduce maintenance costs.
As an added bonus, many health care facilities are finding that
the same measures that reduce their energy consumption also serve
to increase patient comfort and staff productivity, and can even
improve indoor air quality. More comfortable facilities help attract
patients and retain hospital staff.
