Healthcare

FRAME-WORKING THE IMPORTANCE OF LEGIONELLA CONTROL PROCUREMENT

Healthcare estates continue to face ongoing challenges with increasing demand on its services, meaning that time really is money when it comes to operations. With legionella control being one regular – but crucial – management task, Jonathan Oram, Head of Services at national framework provider Pagabo, discusses how the use of frameworks should play a central role in procuring legionella control services for healthcare estates, freeing up valuable time and resource to redirect into other areas.

Why is legionella control important?

Legionnaires’ disease is a form of severe pneumonia with a mortality rate of about 10 to 15% within the UK. To prevent this health risk, most building environments require a legionella control programme that includes monthly outlet temperature checks, and particularly in healthcare environments, little-used outlets require to be flushed twice weekly or daily within acute healthcare settings.

Legionella outbreaks can be minimised by maintaining water temperatures below 20°C or above 55°C within water systems and reducing stagnation within these systems through ‘flushing’ – aka running water through the system.

Legionella control consists of labourintensive statutory tasks identified through a legionella risk assessment for each water system. Within the healthcare setting, the Water Safety Group (WSG) takes responsibility for safe water systems to minimise the risk of legionella proliferation within the water systems, which could lead to an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, subsequently leading to risk to human life.

Significant time and resources are necessary to ensure the compliance of water quality systems as engineers must have physical access to all water outlets within a building. These vital tasks were inevitably made more difficult during the pandemic, as many buildings were left unoccupied or with restricted access.

Within the healthcare setting, with the potential susceptibility of patients and visitors, temperature control, reducing stagnant water and providing safe water systems, is critical due to the potentially fatal impact if not appropriately managed.

So, why should frameworks be central to procuring such services?

With this background, it’s clear to see why sourcing legionella control services is so important, especially for those operating healthcare establishments. However, sourcing the services needs to be done in the right way to ensure the safety of building users, meaning it can be a time-costly process.

The health service has more pressure on it than any other time as it continues to feel the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, catching up with delayed treatments and increased demand from service users who put off getting problems treated until restrictions were lifted. No member of staff within the sector can afford for tasks to be a time drain, especially where it can be avoided. Enter framework agreements, which streamline the entire procurement process for clients.

Pagabo’s Professional Services Framework has a lot dedicated to legionella control services, providing clients with a choice of suppliers that they know are the best in their field. Clients also have the added benefit of a compliant, quick and effective process to get the supplier appointed and work underway without delay.

One of Pagabo’s suppliers is HBE, which can connect healthcare clients with one of the most innovative approaches to legionella control on the market via the framework. The HBE24 solution transforms a healthcare legionella control

monitoring and inspection programme, utilising the latest IoT (Internet of Things) technology for remote temperature monitoring and flushing.

We all understand that there is a requirement to monitor water systems for legionella and other waterborne bacteria. Remote temperature monitoring is a more effective and efficient way of meeting regulatory compliance needs. HBE24 Temp devices take legionella control to the next level through digitalising assets, remotely monitoring temperatures, and removing the need for physical contact through IoT technology, with no requirement to access the IT infrastructure.

Intelligent data and reporting are key to the management of risk, and the HBE24 Platform provides a range of intelligent reports for water safety groups within the healthcare environment.

Flushing of little-used outlets with the units enables a healthcare client to automate a manual task and control the flushing frequency directly from the platform, with a full digital record of flushing tasks for compliance and risk management. This is all coupled with temperature reporting of the asset, with data able to be used to address ongoing legionella control issues that may be present within the systems.

The benefits of this are clear. It minimises site visits, meaning there is no reliance on engineers being physically present or having any delays in monthly or weekly tasks when there may be limited access – and it removes the need for external parties in areas with high risk or vulnerable patients.

It also greatly reduces water usage for a more sustainable approach, with an average of six to 12 litres of water saved per outlet to undertake the temperature task monthly. Reduced energy costs, fuel savings, water efficiency, carbon reduction and cross-building infection from not running hot and cold water to take temperatures and, of course, the savings from reduced man hours.

Why not go direct to suppliers?

Organisations, like Pagabo, seek to connect clients with the best suppliers on the market when making its framework appointments. This doesn’t mean the biggest or most well-known companies; it means those with the most innovative solutions on the market. So, in many ways it makes perfect sense to turn to frameworks, knowing that, as a client, you are dealing with the best solutions on the market, backed up by compliant processes and expert guidance from the framework provider.

And for healthcare clients that must treat every second as gold dust, it seems like a no-brainer to procure statutory services, like legionella control, via a framework agreement to ensure that time, budget and effort is streamlined, and that resource saved can be redeployed to the benefit of patients and staff.  www.pagabo.co.uk