OXYGEN SYSTEMS
Getting medical oxygen to where it is needed
As the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed, the pressure points for government, healthcare, and society, have continually changed. Food shortages, a lack of PPE, furloughs, testing shortfalls, local lockdowns – each has risen to the fore. Right at the start, however, while the pandemic was still affecting mainland Europe much more than the UK, a key question for our medical sector was that of ventilators and the gases needed to keep them operational. As Italy especially faced up to a shortfall of both, the UK set about trying to avoid similar problems. Here, Steve Soper, Medical Group Business manager at Air Products, an industrial gas manufacturer and major supplier of oxygen, discusses the company’s experiences in these early weeks, and how they shaped its response to COVID-19 in the following months.
The term ‘unprecedented’ was used so frequently to describe the pandemic in 2020 that the word seems to have lost its effectiveness over time, but in terms of the way our healthcare system runs, it truly is the only word to use. Since the NHS’s establishment in the late 1940s, there has been nothing like this for the healthcare sector to deal with – nothing with such high intensity, grief, media furore, and uncertainty surrounding every aspect of our lives. From consumer panic or confusion over the latest guidelines, to the additional pressures placed onto the healthcare sector, COVID-19 has challenged everyone.
Healthcare providers have, of course, been going above and beyond to save lives and keep our health services running – not just by treating patients, but also in planning carefully to guard against the potential of services being overwhelmed by increased demand. Consequently, the supply chain which supports the sector has had to step up more than ever before, to help NHS Trusts and private healthcare providers cope with overwhelming pressures and growing patient lists.
Collaboration the key to ‘business as usual’
Without question, collaboration has been the key to maintaining ‘business as usual’ – with healthcare estates managers and engineers playing a crucial role in ensuring that the delivery of critical supplies isn’t delayed. The Government, frontline medical services, and private suppliers, have been linked together more closely day to day than they have previously ever needed be to give them the best chance of tackling this crisis. One of the most important products we have delivered to hospitals during the last seven months has been medical oxygen. In part due to our supply of medical gases to hospitals across the UK, we were identified by the
66 Health Estate Journal March 2021
Three vaporisers in place at the NHS Nightingale Hospital Birmingham.
UK Government as a critical supplier, which meant it was essential that we safely maintained the security of our supply during one of the most challenging periods we’ve ever had to face. Working closely with the Department of Health & Social Care, we had to ensure that our engineering, production, and distribution efforts were aligned and directed to the most critical areas, so that our medical customers could continue providing life- saving treatment to patients. This work had to be done first, it had to be done swiftly, and it had to be done flawlessly. Moreover, it had to be completed under the intense gaze of a level of media scrutiny we rarely experience.
From production plant to hospital Deliveries to our medical oxygen customers were – and continue to be – made from our UK production facilities
in a fleet of articulated cryogenic road tankers and smaller rigid road tankers. The preparation to help meet our customers’ potential future needs as best we could was vital, to maintain the high level of production from our plants, while protecting our people and customers. This was step one. Above all, gas production had to continue uninterrupted to avoid supply drying up – but this had to be done in a way that kept staff safe. Air Products already had a business continuity plan in place, and took the step to implement it in February 2020, before lockdown was even considered, in order to safeguard both employees and the production process. This included restricting access to site visitors, hosting virtual meetings, implementing additional health protocols to segregate specific members of the team and their operations to secure supply, using carefully
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