By Jeff Wardon, Jr., Assistant Editor

Hospitals are vital pillars of societal infrastructure, however, even they can’t resist the growing intensity of extreme weather events. These events test and put strain on their operability, making it especially difficult to function when their communities need them the most. Because of this, resilience then becomes an integral part of healthcare infrastructure planning. 

To better understand where hospitals are most vulnerable and how healthcare facility managers can strengthen their preparedness, Healthcare Facilities Today spoke with Jennifer Mahan, associate at Thornton Tomasetti, a structural engineering firm.  

HFT: What are the biggest vulnerabilities hospitals and healthcare facilities face during extreme weather events or natural disasters?  

Jennifer Mahan: There are a few key considerations to keep in mind. Continued operations and functionality are key for hospitals when a disaster hits, and hospitals are the ones that must be at their best to serve the community. To that end, what aspects are necessary to continue functionality and ensure preparedness beforehand?  

In cases such as flooding or hurricanes, redundant power sources are critical, especially in healthcare. Having generators might be fine, but if the fuel sources are in a flooded area, that essentially renders that backup power sources useless. So, you must consider the full scope of the backup power system and how that functions as well as the logistics of doing all this. For hospitals, this is because it isn’t just the facilities department that has emergency plans – the researchers, the doctors and the patients have plans too – which means they must be factored in as well. 

Another area is access, so be sure you know any critical elevators and how people are gaining access around the hospital. If the elevators become inoperable, how are patients and doctors going to get up and down in the facility? I think for continued functionality to really happen, you need to think of both power source redundancy and the logistics of access or egress in the hospital. This is because these are big vulnerabilities for hospitals that really have little margin for downtime when trying to stay running and serve a community.  

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HFT: What roles do backup power systems, water storage and communications infrastructure play in keeping operations running during crises?   

Mahan: Telecommunications has always been critical, especially in this era of hyper connectivity. Think about cloud storage and systems; they’re used for communicating until there’s an outage. Hospitals must think of how they speak between departments and how to do that efficiently. They also must consider how they communicate externally with patients, the community and municipal governments as well. All three of those might operate different alert systems, and there might be an internal notification system versus a continued external line.  

Each of those needs to have multiple power sources and redundancy in case anyone is down. At this point, it’s an absolutely essential aspect of operations – telecommunications aren’t just optional; they’re critical. 

For water sources, hospitals need to understand that they can’t rely on a municipal system to maintain access to your key utilities. In hospitals, where hygiene and rigorous cleaning are key to their functioning, having backup water sources and storm water prevention systems are all critical to protect the water supplies.  

For power, hospitals have to think of the entire ecosystem of power – where the energy source is coming from, how it’s getting on site, what the source is and how it’s connected to the hospital. We’ve seen just with different hospital entities that we’ve worked with that highly complicated systems are linked to backup power and its connected buildings. This helps make sure that hospitals have the infrastructure to ensure backup power gets where it needs to be.  

Jeff Wardon, Jr., is the assistant editor of the facilities market.