Modern Heathcare
Summary
Hospitals and health systems are under growing pressure to do more with less. Rising labor and supply costs, persistent margin strain and ongoing workforce challenges have forced leaders to scrutinize every aspect of their operations. Yet one of the most consequential — and often overlooked — drivers of both risk and opportunity sits quietly in the background: the physical environment where care is delivered.
“You can make a huge difference with energy conservation. For every dollar saved, that’s money you can put back into your operation to give people a good place to go for their healthcare,” said Johnny Morris, Senior Director of Engineering at Carilion Clinic.
On the power generation side, cogeneration – also known as combined heat and power – was installed at Munson Medical Center with the assistance of Trane, leading to a 50% cut to the hospital’s electricity bill and giving the hospital greater resilience during outages and better adaptability in power supply management.
Healthcare organizations are also exploring financing mechanisms designed to ease capital constraints such as energy-as-a-service. In some cases, organizations are entering concession-style agreements, where ownership and operation of certain infrastructure assets are shifted to a partner. “The hospital is in essence offloading assets that create their environment and saying, ‘I want you to own it, I want you to generally operate it, and I will buy it as a utility or I will buy it as an outcome,’” Vierling said.
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