FEATURE ARTICLES

Last month’s HEJ featured an article, the second in our new series of guidance pieces aimed principally at Technician-level engineers, highlighting some of the key steps that boiler operators can take to maximise system performance and efficiency, and thus reduce running both costs and carbon footprint.

The Department of Health (DH) has released a revised and updated version of its NHS Premises Assurance Model (NHS PAM), a software-based tool originally launched in 2010 to enable estates and facilities managers to more easily gauge the overall ‘condition’ of their built estate, provide premises assurance to their management Boards using a nationally consistent technique, assure commissioners that healthcare is being delivered from high quality, ‘clean, safe, and suitable’ premises, and identify the priority areas for improving premises infrastructure efficiency and quality.

Three years after launching the NHS Carbon Reduction Strategy 2009, Saving Carbon, Improving Health, the NHS Sustainable Development Unit (NHS SDU) has initiated a ‘major consultation and engagement exercise’ to inform the development of a new ‘Sustainable Development Strategy for The Health, Public Health and Social Care System’ for 2014-2020.

The damning findings of the latest Francis Inquiry, headed up by Robert Francis QC, and set up to examine the deficiencies in the monitoring of patient safety and well-being at the main hospital run by the Mid Staffordshire Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Stafford Hospital, between January 2005 and March 2009, by the commissioning, supervisory, and regulatory bodies responsible, have been published.

When measures to prevent Legionella fail, and a positive result is returned from the laboratory, there is an imperative to act fast to stamp infection out, but taking the right action requires a rigorous approach.

According to Steve Pardy, a partner with consulting engineers, Zisman Bowyer & Partners, ‘the issue of full compliance is challenging NHS Trusts with finances under pressure and ageing assets’.

Healthcare estates and facilities teams specifying flooring have a wealth of different elements to consider, from the flooring’s visual impact, to how easy it is to keep clean, and how durable it will prove over a period of years, to such key safety aspects as its slip resistance and the degree of colour contrast.

In the second of a series of articles planned to run regularly in HEJ (see the January 2013 issue for the first) designed to provide healthcare engineers with sound technical guidance on equipment or technology-related topics.

In an article which first appeared in the September 2012 issue of The Australian Hospital Engineer magazine, Mark Stokoe, acting manager, Infrastructure Support, for Western Australia’s Women & Newborn Health Service and Child & Adolescent Health Service, considers how, in the light of a current decline in its use, a benchmarking tool harnessed by healthcare estates and facilities managers at some 60 Australian hospitals since its original establishment in 1996 might be revitalised, and its relevance extended, including via the launch of a new online version.

Dave Blackwell, Matthew Crouch, Berni Baier, and Larry Isford, of leading air filtration and ‘clean air’ specialist, Camfil Farr, explain how properly filtered indoor air can make a major contribution in the fight against healthcare-associated infection, but point out that specifiers of the latest filtration products need to ensure that they are fully cognisant with their ‘real-world’ performance.

The past few years have seen ever-increasing emphasis from the regulators, inspection bodies, and the Department of Health, on the cleanliness and general fitness-for-purpose of hospital wards and other patient care environments.

Last month’s HEJ saw editor, Jonathan Baillie, report on ‘the first half’ of a recent roundtable debate staged jointly in London by IHEEM and multidisciplinary engineering consultancy, Crofton Design.

Plans now well into implementation, to transfer ownership, this April, of the assets and buildings formerly owned by Primary Care Trusts on their abolition to a new limited company, NHS Property Services, have naturally aroused considerable interest across the healthcare estates community.

The range and choice of flooring now available for use in hospitals, care homes, GP’s surgeries, and other healthcare facilities, is now seemingly almost unlimited, as, it seems, are the creative and design possibilities given flooring manufacturers’ ability to incorporate not only a broad palette of different colours, but also a myriad of designs.

A recent webinar hosted by the Building & Engineering Services Association (B&ES) in partnership with IHEEM examined ‘the threat posed by dirty ductwork’ in hospitals and other healthcare facilities, with one of the key participants and organisers, Dr Ghasson Shabha, senior lecturer at Birmingham School of the Built Environment, arguing that such facilities are ‘struggling to contain airborne infections transmitted via poorly maintained ventilation and air conditioning systems’.

Harrowing television images of the evacuation of a number of New York hospitals during last October’s Hurricane Sandy will no doubt have prompted many estates managers to reconsider the adequacy and resilience of their emergency power supply.

In the first of a series of articles planned to run regularly in HEJ designed to provide healthcare engineers – and especially those operating at Technician level – with sound technical guidance on a key equipment or technology-related topic.

One of the most important challenges facing the UK healthcare estates community, particularly given the sector’s ageing profile, is how to attract new talent, especially, but not only, in terms of school, college, and university leavers, who may well never have considered healthcare engineering or estate management as a potential career.

‘The taxpayer is losing millions of pounds in poorly procured healthcare buildings due to the lack of construction expertise within the NHS Trusts; the Government urgently needs to redress this if the losses are not to spiral out of control’.

Valuable contributions, in some cases spanning a long and distinguished career, in a wide variety of different healthcare engineering and estates management disciplines, were recognised in style with the presentation of the 2012 IHEEM Awards at last October’s Healthcare Estates 2012 Annual IHEEM Dinner.