North Kansas City Hospital – Electrical Testing & Upgrade
Apr 24, 2013
North Kansas City Hospital
Electrical Testing & Upgrade
North Kansas City Hospital (NKCH) was established in 1958, with the opening of its 80-bed patient facility. Today, the hospital encompasses 72 acres and is the busiest hospital in the Kansas City metro area. With over 550 physicians in 45 medical specialties, it is important that NKCH keeps its medical technology fresh. In no area is this more crucial than in the 16 Operating Room suites included in the main hospital for NKCH. The Operating Room suites must handle a variety of medical technologies, changing from one type of procedure one day to a different the next day.
Evolving With Technology
Because the demands of medical technology have greatly increased over the last decade, NKCH has become concerned that their Operating Room suites have insufficient electrical capacity to support further improvements in technology. For this reason, sys-tek was asked to evaluate the electrical systems for several of the Operating Room suites. For each suite, we recorded electrical demand on the electrical panel serving the suite, as well as individual circuits within the suite. In some cases, we also traced out all of the electrical circuits in the suite to verify which loads were on each circuit. Based on this data, sys-tek advised NKCH on which systems could be temporarily expanded to provide additional electrical points of use.
Powerful Solutions
Following this testing phase, sys-tek developed a plan and design to upgrade the electrical systems for all 16 Operating Room suites. The design includes installing a new transformer and distribution panelboard to supply power to the Operating Room suites, installing a new 42-circuit panelboard for each Operating Room to increase the number of available circuits, and installing three levels of surge protection to improve power quality & to protect the new equipment.
