Plumbers for hospitals offer essential services because modern healthcare facilities need advanced plumbing solutions to follow local, state, and national codes and standards. The right plumbers for hospitals can provide much-needed support for these facilities and ensure the reliability of drainage, gas, and water supply lines.
Here are a few crucial factors to consider when dealing with plumbing systems in the healthcare industry.
Why Hospital Plumbing is Important
Typical plumbing concerns for all facilities include:
- Repairing a sink, toilet, and shower.
- Maintaining piping systems across the facility for air, water, and gas.
- Keeping drain systems and wastewater lines open and operating properly.
- Maintaining sprinkler systems, valves, heads, and other fire-safety equipment.
Both health care and non-health care facilities must address measures to conserve water. From both economic and environmental perspectives, it makes good sense to monitor water consumption. An efficient and up-to-date plumbing system could help make conservation a reality.
On the other hand, it’s well known that the sanitary requirements for hospital settings are much more demanding than most non-hospital ones. What some people don’t know is that hospital bacteria strains tend to be more resistant in both levels and spectra to bacteriostatic and antibiotics and bactericidal concentrations of disinfectants and antiseptics.
Tests revealed in one case that a hospital bacterial strain had a marked resistance to 3-5 drugs. At the same time, a form of the same bacteria discovered in non-hospital environments was resistant to only 1-2 drugs. In such instances, hospitals are challenged to specify and effectively use more concentrated organic and non-organic cleaning chemicals, antiseptics, and disinfectants than in non-hospital environments. They must use them more frequently.
Inspecting the Scope
The number of plumbing systems and plumbing fixtures in health care facilities is much larger, as is the breadth of equipment types, such as medical gas systems and piping for air, oxygen, and nitrous oxide, which must be available in emergency and operating areas, and patient rooms.
The need for plumbers for hospitals includes running a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week central processing department, where instruments and equipment are washed in several disinfectors and washers, then sterilized in dozens or even hundreds of sterilizers.
Plumbing systems for this central processing should effectively handle water and steam utilized in the cart washers, instrument washers, and disinfectors. They should also maintain the medical gas systems needed for ethylene oxide or hydrogen peroxide used in the sterilizers.
An immense challenge for managers is maintaining the environment at a high level of cleanliness on surfaces, in potable water systems, and the air. They also must minimize contact by caregivers, patients, and visitors with the plumbing fixtures used by many occupants daily.
At the same time, custodial personnel and other people must subject fixtures to a strong concentration of chemicals, like chlorine bleach and ammonia solutions, to maintain a sanitary environment. Fixtures must be corrosion-resistant to withstand these harsh chemicals and the abrasion of the cleaning process. Medical gas piping, valves, and fittings also require special care to ensure the safety and health of patients.
Designing The System for Safety
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) summarizes the best standards and practices for installing vacuum and gas systems in the medical setting in NFPA 99. These codes require that all piping, valves, and fittings used to transport and deliver medical gas be prepared to the same standards as those utilized to transport oxygen. This standard ensures that staff members and patients stay safer in the hospital.
Access to Different Types of Water
Many medical facilities need access to purified water to guarantee the accuracy of test results and the safety and health of patients. Hot water heating systems should also be precisely calibrated to lessen the risk to patients in these environments. Installing systems to purify water and prevent contamination and backflow could significantly enhance workflows in the healthcare industry. Your dedicated plumbers for hospitals can provide you with the right sanitary management solutions for deionized and purified water to optimize your laboratory workflows and ensure the best access for your employees.
Managing Waste Issues
Wastewater and other chemicals can create serious sanitary issues if released without proper remediation and treatment. The right solutions can provide added environmental protection while ensuring staff members’ and patients’ safety and well-being. You can reduce risks inside and outside the healthcare facilities by taking steps to manage wastewater release safely.
Repair and Replacement Services
Routine inspections are required to keep older gas lines and plumbing fixtures in good repair. It’s especially important in the healthcare environment. Taking steps to replace old pipes, fittings and fixtures could prevent breakdowns that could prove expensive to repair and dangerous for patients in long-term care facilities and hospitals. By investing in reliable services of plumbers for hospitals, healthcare facilities can maintain a healthy environment for the patients while ensuring continuity of operations now and in the future.
Challenges of Caring for Plumbing in Healthcare Facilities and Hospitals
Unlike your home, healthcare facilities have many special plumbing needs requiring more demanding and meticulous services. First, healthcare facilities have many more types of piping, drain systems, and other plumbing systems—for example, medical gas systems, which need special maintenance procedures for patient safety and health. Reliable plumbers for hospitals will help guarantee these systems are handled adeptly.
Furthermore, healthcare facilities also have huge numbers of plumbing fixtures, piping, and systems. This overwhelming amount of plumbing in clinics and hospitals could make it hard to maintain each valve, pipe, fixture, and other equipment. Therefore, healthcare plumbing could be difficult to maintain due to the sheer number of components in their systems. Paired with 24-hour operations for hospitals, this could make healthcare facilities’ services even more tricky. Sudden failure and long service interruptions are unacceptable and can even be dangerous. Therefore, choose plumbers for hospitals specifically trained in caring for healthcare buildings.
What Happens When a Hospital Plumbing System is Unmaintained?
Hospitals are prone to drainage clogs because many things go down the sink that shouldn’t, especially in parts of the hospitals where patients reside. Everything from diapers and paper towels to plastic bottles and even grease often finds its way into hospital plumbing systems’ drains and pipes. = When large items like these get mixed up in the plumbing systems, it presents complex challenges for plumbers for hospitals working to keep plumbing systems working optimally.
When a clog happens, plumbers for hospitals must tackle the problem quickly before it gets out of hand. However, it’s not as simple as pouring a jug of Drain-O down the drain. In large medical facilities, plumbing systems are large and complex, meaning plumbers for hospitals usually have to spend a good deal of time locating the clog and planning how to unclog it. If clogs go unattended or take too long to clear up, what started as an annoying clog in one patient room can affect the entire facility.
The Dangers Hiding in Backed Up Hospital Drains
Plumbing clogs are a hassle and headache for anyone. However, certain dangers arise when they occur in hospital settings if a clog isn’t cleared up on time. For example, hospital drains are notorious breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant superbug bacteria. When drainage clogs occur, these dangerous bacteria are more likely to splash out of sinks onto countertops or people. In extreme cases, something like this could even lead to an outbreak of the disease in the hospital. However, deadly bacteria don’t just thrive in hospital drains. They’re in plumbing pipes, as well. Bacteria are often more difficult to remove once they grow in plumbing pipes.
How Dedicated Plumbers For Hospitals Can Help
Your healthcare plumbing requires regular inspection, preventative maintenance, predictive maintenance, replacement, and repair services for the best outcomes. It can help prevent unexpected plumbing issues and failures. A burst pipe in your house is never a good thing, but a burst pipe in a hospital could indicate the difference between life and death for your patients.
Hence, you need regular healthcare facilities plumbing services to keep your plumbing in good condition and prevent issues for your staff, patients, and hospital. A specialized team of plumbers for hospitals could help you manage all these efforts and know the safest sanitary procedures for maintaining healthcare plumbing.
Moreover, keeping track of services for each component of your healthcare facility’s plumbing can be difficult. How do you guarantee that each piece is checked and maintained frequently enough? It is where computerized maintenance logs could help streamline the process and help you and your maintenance team keep track of every portion of your plumbing system and all the other systems in your facility.
The experts at Shelton Plumbing can give your healthcare facility the most comprehensive and advanced services in the industry. We could repair and replace older gas lines, water supplies, and other fixtures to keep your healthcare buildings in good repair. Call us today to learn more about our plumbing solutions and services!