The importance of optimizing HVAC systems for hospitals is essential to ensure that patients and hospital staff are comfortable. This article will highlight the importance of optimizing HVAC systems for your hospital.
1. Improved air quality
Do you know that a lack of fresh air can cause people to get sick? Did you also know that an unclean HVAC system is a major contributor to poor indoor air quality? As a solution, keeping your hospital’s HVAC system in proper working order will help improve the overall air quality for patients and staff.
You probably already know that HVAC stands for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. These three components work together to ensure the overall comfort of your building, but they’re also critical when it comes to providing you with clean air.
Hospital-acquired infections carry a high mortality rate. When patients are discharged from the hospital, they may be carrying either a bacterial infection or virus from the stay. If those patients are later admitted for another condition at your hospital, those infections can become a serious problem quickly.
If you’ve got an unclean HVAC system, you’re increasing the chances of exposing new and existing patients to bacteria and viruses that cause illness.
2. Reduced energy costs
Poorly run HVAC systems can cause energy costs to skyrocket. This is because the system has to work harder and longer in order to produce the same power output as a properly optimized unit.
Because of this, having your HVAC system’s optimization practices continuously monitored ensures that you’re running only what you need and not wasting valuable resources.
HVAC is simply another form of energy that has to be paid for. If you’re running the system at a higher rate, it costs your hospital more money in order to power up. For this reason, it’s important to have processes in place that help keep these costs under control.
3. Improved HVAC system up-time
It’s a scientific fact that units that are overused will inevitably break down, leading to a complete shut down in the case of larger systems. This can cause your overall HVAC system availability to drop when you need it most, which is when heat or A/C is desperately needed during extreme weather conditions.
On the other hand, optimized hospital air conditioning systems can help your staff and patients remain comfortable at all times. When a system isn’t working as hard to keep air flowing throughout a building, it’s less likely to have a mechanical failure or breakdown.
In addition, this means that you should schedule routine maintenance visits at best possible time. Scheduling your HVAC in Atlanta tune-ups when your unit is down can lead to increased repair costs because the repair technicians often have to come out multiple times in order to find and resolve issues.
4. Increased sales opportunities
happy patient is more likely to have a positive experience at your hospital, which results in them being more likely to refer family and friends your way. In other words, a rising tide lifts all boats.
To reach these goals, you need to ensure that patients are comfortable at all times, which means having an optimized HVAC system in place. When units aren’t working as hard or as long as they should be, the air quality inside tends to suffer.
This leads to increased dissatisfaction among patients, which in turn can lead to decreased sales opportunities for your hospital. It’s very important that you work with a company that specializes in optimizing HVAC systems in order to maintain optimal air quality throughout the building at all times, is well versed with the HVAC design manual for hospitals and clinics, and can improve the efficiency of your HVAC system.
5. Reduced staffing costs
A properly optimized HVAC system requires less staffing because of the reduced hours of operation. For example, if your unit is running on a standard schedule that calls for it to stay on from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m., you’ll likely have higher levels of staff required at those times to operate and control the HVAC system as needed.
However, if your system is optimized and only requires ‘on’ time from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m., then you’ll need fewer staff members in order to control the unit during those times when it’s running. This can result in lower staffing costs over time when you take this into consideration with everything else that we’ve covered.
As you can see, HVAC system optimization is a very important process for all hospitals to take into consideration. Not only does it help improve patient satisfaction and comfort levels, but it also lowers costs by reducing energy consumption and lowering the overall operational hours of the building’s HVAC units.
In conjunction with this, it can increase patient satisfaction levels, which can also have positive effects on other areas of your hospital.
Hospitals are always in the spotlight when it comes to keeping patients safe. One of the most important ways hospitals can do this is by ensuring optimal HVAC systems for all rooms and patient areas.
