OHRH's Facilities Division Keeps All In-check

By Freddie Bourne Messenger-Inquirer

Though people who enter Owensboro Health Regional Hospital may typically see the faces of those working with patients on a regular basis,  others work behind-the-scenes in the facilities division ensuring all systems are a-go for everyone involved.

“We want to have an environment of care that is easy for our clinicians to render hands-on care regardless of the day or night, time of day, time of year,” said Joe Taylor, OHRH’s executive director of facilities.

Taylor, who’s been with the health system since March 2010 — three months before the current hospital’s groundbreaking ceremony — said the department has a number of employees in various sub departments that zero in on responsibilities all related to building and grounds, ranging from major construction, system-wide changes to facilities and more.

“We’ve  got a lot of dotted-line relationships here,” Taylor said.

Regardless of the weather, Taylor and his team continuously work on having the hospital be in tip top shape. “Taking care of the quality of the environment is not a seasonal issue; that’s an all the time issue,” Taylor said. “The codes and standards around taking care of patients are not dependent on seasonality.

“In the operating rooms, we’re required to have a minimum of 20 air changes an hour; (which) means every three minutes, you get 100% new air in an operating room,” Taylor said. “We’re required to maintain the temperatures between 68 and 72 degrees in the operating rooms.”

Taylor also highlighted the importance of pressurization.

“When you’re in the operating rooms, the room has to be positively pressurized; so when the door to the operating door is closed, we’re not sucking air out of the (building) into the operating room. It has to be pressurized so that air gets pushed out of the openings in order to keep the operating room sterile,” he said. “That’s a balance between the fresh air we’re bringing in and the exhaust  that we’re pulling out.”

However, Taylor said there are times where it can be more difficult when the temperatures outside drop and the air needs to be reheated to achieve the desired maintenance in the room.

“It’s a different set of equipment, different processes; and all of that equipment, we’ve got to maintain so it functions like it’s supposed to,” Taylor said.

Taylor said he and his team have other dedicated tasks dependent  on the time of the year, such  as the grounds crew following a “whole different set of processes that happen in the winter time.”

“You would think those guys are not mowing, they’re not weeding, they’re not planting flowers — they’ve got plenty of time on their hands,” he said. “What they’re doing is winterizing our grounds and they’re getting ready for that 2 a.m. call to come  back  in; because at 6 a.m. when all of our employees are coming to work and a bunch are leaving, we don’t want (anybody) to fall in the parking lot; we want them to be able to find their parking spaces ….”

“It’s like all-hands-on deck,” Taylor said. “We do our own snow removal. The only time we don’t is if there’s a great big snow (because) we just don’t have the major equipment (to) clean the lots.”

Illness can also prove to bring about some obstacles in terms of the day-to-day routine.

“The way that you have to take care of an airborne virus like RSV or COVID is with filtration; and that’s why we wear the masks,” Taylor said.

On a regular basis, Taylor said patient rooms are required to have a minimum of six air changes and receive 100% new air every 10 minutes. But when a patient has COVID, Taylor said they are placed into a dedicated airborne infection isolation (AII) room that has “negative pressure” — meaning the air is being brought in from outside in order to not spread the virus throughout the rest of the facility.

“It becomes difficult when, for instance, our COVID census … exceeds our number of AII rooms,” Taylor said. “... We have to then modify some of our regular rooms to become the equivalent of AII rooms with respect to filtration.

“Our goal is to keep everybody safe,” Taylor said.

One of the overall goals for the health system from a facilities standpoint, Taylor said, is reducing its carbon footprint and “to improve the quality of the environment of care” for years to come.

“We are an Energy Star hospital, and have been for three out of the last four years,” Taylor said. “Now we’re taking that to our other facilities; it’s been two years that we’re Energy Star for our medical office building here, and now we’re beginning to work at our Muhlenberg Community Hospital and all three of our (Healthplex facilities).

“Little by little, we are — as a system  — looking to reduce our carbon footprint which helps (the system save) money,” Taylor said. “We’re not a revenue department; we’re an expense department.”

While there is a large amount of responsibility in facilities, Taylor — who oversees all of it — “(loves) getting up every day” and “can’t wait” to come into work.

“What I get out of it is these people are passionate about what they do, and it is fun to work around passionate people (who) are all doing different things for the same reason,” he said.