Hospital AC Units

Maintaining Your Hospital HVAC System

Initial building costs like those associated with installing hospital air conditioning units and hospital ventilation systems can make up about 10% of total building expenses over the first 40 years. You may be surprised to learn that operational costs, like running your hospital HVAC system can account for half of total building expenses over that same period. That's one of the reasons facilities management is so important. Poor facilities management and the lack of a comprehensive maintenance program is a major culprit for high-energy costs in hospitals. More importantly a poorly maintained hospital HVAC system can break down and threaten the health and safety of patients.

Hospital Air Conditioning Maintenance

While most hospital and clinics have their own maintenance teams many also choose to hire additional outside facilities managements experts. An outside company that specializes in hospital HVAC preventative maintenance can develop a comprehensive program for your hospital that includes a maintenance agreement covering both diagnostics and repairs. A maintenance agreement can save you money and add some stability to your operational budget by making maintenance into more of a fixed cost. By waiting for your hospital air conditioning unit to fail before repairing it, maintenance costs remains unpredictable. An experienced team will take a whole building approach to maintenance that integrates hospital air conditioning and hospital ventilation with other vital building systems.

The Risks of Not Having a Hospital HVAC Maintenance Plan

Waiting for equipment to break or fail before replacing or repairing it is fine for parts that are inexpensive or aren't system critical. But waiting for hospital air conditioning equipment to fail before repairing it can be problematic for an number reasons:

• Downtime-Equipment can fail with very little warning. Downtime may mean moving patients around and compromising care

• Higher costs-Emergency repair and replacement or temporary measures can be costly. Work needs to be done on an expedited bases and there's less time to ask for bids on jobs

• Failure of equipment can cause safety hazards like fan blades damaging the hospital ventilation system or worse

Having a hospital HVAC preventative maintenance agreement will save money over time. Be sure to find a company that understands the maintenance procedures necessary to insure the health of both your patients and your building.