Healthy Improvements for Aging Hospital

New regulations, mandates, environmental guidelines and increasing maintenance costs were putting a strain on an already tight budget for Methodist Healthcare-McNairy Hospital in rural Tennessee.

“Our 30-year old physical plant was in need of major updating and replacement,” says hospital administrator Rosemont Tyler. “The location of the hospital made it difficult for service companies to address our problems on a piecemeal basis. These issues, coupled with the magnitude of capital required for the project, made it necessary for us to explore alternative ways to get the job done.”

The existing generator was old and improperly sized for the hospital’s existing load, operating room comfort was a problem and much of the mechanical equipment was reaching the end of its useful life. The new equipment specified for the hospital included the following:

An emergency generator for protection from electrical outages.

A variable-air-volume (VAV) system to serve the operating rooms and X-ray areas. Converting electric VAV reheat to steam has resulted in utility savings.

A lighting retrofit to improve light levels and reduce costs.

Chillers with improved efficiency and reliability.

Finally, at the heart of the hospital’s new infrastructure, a building-management system provides monitoring and control of critical areas in the hospital. As in most hospital retrofit projects, operations were maintained during the work.

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