JCAHO News

Preventing adverse events caused by emergency electrical power system failures Health care facilities are highly dependent on reliable sources of electrical power. Therefore, electric power is a mission-critical resource. Each health care facility must assess the risk of electrical power failure – at various degrees of magnitude and impact severity – and make plans to deal with such an emergency. Planning and implementation of risk reduction approaches to addressing electrical power failure are the responsibility of the facility engineer, as well as organization management, the risk manager, incident command leaders, and the medical staff. By assuming access to emergency electrical power systems and implementing contingency plans for clinicians to follow during both short-term and sustained losses of power, health care organizations can reduce the risk of adverse patient care events.

NFPA Update

Reliability Requires Smart Testing and Maintenance Emergency power supply system (EPSS) failures have occurred in large part because of the lack of smart maintenance and testing at various levels. Some facilities fall down on the regular testing and maintenance and then simply replace infrastructure equipment when its condition deteriorates too much. NFPA 110 recognizes this and includes testing and maintenance requirements in the body of the standard and recommendations on the Annex.