Hospitals stay powered to meet medical needs

St. John’s fared well – the main hospital facility on South National Avenue retained power throughout the storm, as did the health system’s two other largest facilities, Smith Glynn Callaway and Mercy Villa. Nearly all of the hospital’s 144 outlying clinics also are operating normally.

Bob Norton, St. John’s director of health systems facilities, said even if the hospital had lost its main power supply, five generators would bring up critical circuits within 10 seconds, and the hospital has enough fuel on hand to supply power for about a week. The generators supplying power just to the main hospital building would cost about $2,000 an hour to operate.

CoxHealth also came through the storm OK. Cox North lost power for less than 48 hours, according to Executive Director of Facilities Management Rod Schaffer. Generators supplied power during that time. Cox South never lost its main power source.

Schaffer said some of the hospital’s outlying buildings also were dropped to emergency power.

During an outage, “most of the ancillary areas don’t have much, if any, power,” Schaffer added. “There’ll be a little in the way of lighting, like exit signs, to help people in and out. But most of (our backup energy) is designed with patient safety in mind.”

He said outpatient procedures at the outlying buildings were rescheduled to make sure there was enough electricity to care for patients at the main hospitals.