04/05/2011 // Riverdale, NJ, USA // Camfil // Lynne Laake // (press release)
(Camfil Air Filters in the News) – For any hospital, the goal isn’t only to provide superb medical care. It’s to provide superb care to as many patients as possible. That means using resources in an efficient, sustainable, optimal way. Unfortunately, that’s not something every health care facility does. But they can — when the right strategies and products are used. This is the lesson one hospital that switched to Camfil air filters learned. And along the way, both the hospital and its patients reaped an assortment of important benefits.
On the surface, the hospital seemed to be doing everything right. A two-story, 81,000-square-foot facility — part acute care hospital, part extended treatment/rehabilitation facility — it incorporated energy efficiency in its lighting and mechanical systems. But it was, to put it simply, leaving a lot of efficiency on the table. The hospital air filters it used — a crucial component for any health care facility, intended to provide a comfortable indoor environment while keeping harmful particles out of the air — required regular, indeed frequent, change outs. The facility’s pre-filters required replacement every two months on average. Its final filters needed to be changed once a year. Not only did this mean significant replacement and disposal costs, but it was taxing on the hospital’s available manpower. Already the facility was operating with a reduced level of staff. The time required to perform so many air filter change outs was burdensome.
Clearly, the best solution — one that didn’t require the expense of new hires or infrastructure redesigns — was to change the air filters less frequently. But this poses a particular challenge in a hospital setting. Air filters are vital to keeping the spread of infection at bay. Using air filters that have significantly degraded puts the health of patients, staff, and visitors at risk. The hospital needed a way to reduce air filter change outs without compromising on air filter quality.
That’s where Camfil came in. Its air filters use an innovative design that maintains efficiency throughout the lifetime of the product, instead of degrading markedly as time goes on — a well-known issue with more traditionally designed air filters. Camfil proposed that the hospital use its 30/30 pleated pre-filter design instead of the existing fiberglass throwaway filters the facility had been using. It also suggested using long-lasting Camfil Durafil final filters instead of the hospital’s existing AAF VariCel final filters.
A life cycle cost analysis (LCC) revealed that using the Camfil filters would result in significant savings. Over five years, the facility would save $4,590 for every 10 filters, the average number of air filters in an HVAC system in the hospital. And because the Camfil final filters would last twice as long as the existing filters, the hospital would save $694 annually here alone.
But when the hospital put the new Camfil filters into place, it discovered another big benefit: Energy demand was sharply reduced, too (from 4,330,265 kilowatt hours in a year to 3,631,151 kilowatt hours), thanks to the air filters’ more efficient design. That translated into savings of approximately $28,000 in HVAC costs.
As the filters were changed less often, replacement and disposal costs were also reduced. The manpower issue became a non-issue, too, as the fewer change outs now required were easily handled by the hospital’s existing staff.
The savings — both in costs and manpower — enabled the hospital to make better use of its resources. That meant it could do more, and serve more of the community, without sacrificing quality of care. By simply changing to a more sustainable, more efficient air filter, the hospital took a big step towards the ultimate goal of any health care facility: optimal care for everyone who needs it.
The world leader in air filtration systems and clean air solutions — for health care and other industries — Camfil provides the tools to achieve sustainability, maintain high air quality, and reduce airborne infections; all while lowering total cost of ownership. We’ve helped hospitals, office buildings, hotels, and other facilities go green without ever sacrificing performance. For more information on how our air filters can reduce HVAC costs, visit our newsroom at https://hvacairfiilters.submitmypressrelease.com, read about the Clean Air Solutions Company at https://cleanair.camfil.us, or call us at (toll free) 888.599.6620.
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