Owensboro Health Committed to Energy Efficiency

By Scott Hagerman, Messenger-Inquirer

Owensboro Health Regional Hospital recently received its fifth Energy Star Rating, which recognizes medical facilities that put an emphasis on energy efficiency. 

Facilities seeking Energy Star recognition must have an Energy Use Index of 75. The hospital received a 77, which means its EUI is better than 77% of the hospitals in the country. 

While Joe Taylor, Owensboro Health’s executive director of facilities, is thrilled with the score, he’s more pleased about how much money that means OH has saved in utility costs. Since 2014, when the hospital began working toward receiving the Energy Star designation, it has decreased energy consumption by 26.6%, which has led to a savings of more than $4.5 million. 

“We celebrate every year when we get Energy Star again, and we go over these numbers,” Taylor said. “We have put back into the organization $4.5 million that we otherwise would have spent on utilities, that can be used for patient care.” 

Earning recognition and saving on energy costs wasn’t completed overnight. In fact, it took OH officials about a year just to get a grasp on the facility after it opened in June 2013. 

“We spent probably the first year just getting comfortable in our new home,” Taylor said. “We had brand new technology that our maintenance and engineering team was trying to get used to, an energy-management system that was very sophisticated, and it took us probably a year just to get our arms around how best to operate all of this sophisticated equipment in this 900,000 square-foot building. 

“So in the summer of 2014, we really started digging into our utility bills and the amount of money we were spending on electricity, natural gas and water, and noted that compared to facilities of similar size around the country, we were spending too much money. We were spending way too much money for lighting and air conditioning, basically on our utilities.” 

Taylor learned how poorly the hospital was doing with its energy costs when, using the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star system as a benchmark to compare itself with similar facilities around the country, it was found the hospital was in the 17th to 19th percentile of efficient hospitals. 

The goal was to become an Energy Star facility in five years. 

“We knew it was going to take a long time, and we knew we had to move methodically, and that’s what we did,” Taylor said. “We wanted a tangible goal that everybody could get on board with, and we found it in Energy Star. We were very inefficient. So there was a lot that we saw that we could do. 

“For every dollar we don’t have to spend on utilities, that money can go back into patient care. That’s kind of where we set our goal and how we promoted this among our staff and leadership. We set about going after it.”

That focus on energy efficiency paid off in 2019, when the hospital received its first Energy Star designation just under five years from when it set the goal. It has since been recognized four more times. 

While several improvements played a part in the exceptional turnaround in energy efficiency, Taylor said changes in lighting made a big difference. 

“We moved to all LED lighting in a lot of our corridors and public spaces, and throughout the hospital we got rid of fluorescent tubes; LED is far more efficient,” said Taylor, who also noted an emphasis was put on not using them when not needed. “As an example, think about a lot of spaces that are rarely used but they’re lighted all of the time, like stairwells. We have stairs that go nine stories and most of the time there is nobody in them, or nobody at every single level. Yet when we opened (the hospital), the lights in those stairwells were on 24/7, whether there was somebody in the stairwell or not. 

“So we put sensors on the lights in the stairwells so when somebody opens the door to come into the stairs, the light goes on. When there is nobody on that landing, the light goes off after a time. We find we’re only lighting the stairs for less than 15% of the time now.” 

Changes were also made in the Surgical Services Department that had a big impact on efficiency. 

“The requirements in surgery are very strict for things like air changes, temperature, humidity; it requires a certain level of filtration,” Taylor said. “But to maintain those 24/7 is very expensive. In some of our (operating rooms), the temperature will go down to 68 degrees during a procedure, but when the room is empty, we don’t need the temperature to stay at 68 degrees. So in the middle of the night we have night setbacks, so when there is nobody working in that very critical space, the HVAC systems scale back. Like the stairs, they’re on sensors. 

“But if someone walks in the door at 3 in the morning to begin setting up a case, like an emergency case, the staff would walk through the door and begin setting up the case, and within three minutes that space goes back to what they need it to be at to do surgery.” 

Taylor believes Owensboro Health Regional Hospital has achieved about all the efficiencies it can. 

“We think that holding the gains here is going to be the best we can do,” he said. But he sees a lot of other OH facilities where improvements can be made to achieve the highest efficiency possible, which has already been accomplished at the Pleasant Valley Medical Building that’s attached to the hospital. It has earned Energy Star medical building recognition for three years. 

OH is installing solar panels on the rooftop of the Henderson Healthplex, and Taylor anticipates improvements coming to OH’s Muhlenberg Community Hospital and Twin Lakes Medical Center. 

“I’m so proud of this facility, the people and what they’ve accomplished,” Taylor said. “Most of the great ideas have come from the team here.”