SPECIALIST ENGINEERING
Project doubles hospital’s endoscopy capacity
Chris Beric RPEQ, CPEng, MIEAust, NER, a Building Engineering and Maintenance (BEMS) engineer at Townsville Hospital and Health Service in Queensland, Australia, describes the healthcare engineering aspects of a complex project to redevelop and expand the Endoscopy Department at Townsville University Hospital.
In 2018-2019, the Endoscopy Department at Townsville University Hospital (TUH) was redeveloped and expanded to meet contemporary healthcare delivery requirements. This article will review the endoscopy project from a healthcare engineering perspective – including the challenges involved with construction, commissioning, and operation. A key aspect of the project involved achieving compliance with AS/NZS 4187, which is the governing standard for the reprocessing of reusable medical devices (RMDs) in health organisations. The Endoscopy Department has an integrated reprocessing area for cleaning and sterilising endoscopes between procedures, which is a specialised activity that requires significant infection control considerations. AS/NZS 4187 was updated and released in 2014. The Australian Commission of Safety and Quality issued an implementation deadline which required
An endoscopy procedure room.
hospitals to deliver compliance with this revised standard by December 2021.
Project background The project was an A$6 million Queensland Government investment. The project doubled the size and capacity of the endoscopy service in Townsville. The new department was constructed
within existing shell space on level one of the Townsville University Hospital, and features four procedure rooms, four pass-through automated endoscope reprocessors (AERs), seven endoscope drying cabinets, three clean air compressors, and two reverse osmosis (RO) plants for water treatment. The plant and equipment were an integral part of achieving AS/NZS 4187 compliance. Construction began in August 2018, and was completed in September 2019. The project team included Peddle Thorp as the principal architect, Parkers Hydraulic Consulting Group, LCJ Engineers, and Ashburner Francis as consultants, Turner & Townsend Thinc as superintendent and project manager, Paynters as managing contractor, and representatives from TUH including the Medical Service group’s endoscopy department, infrastructure office, building engineering and maintenance (BEMS), and Infection Prevention and Control.
Project driving factors Cantel automated endoscope reprocessors (AERs).
This article, entitled ‘Townsville University Hospital Endoscopy Department Redevelopment’, was first published in the September 2020 issue of Healthcare Facilities, the magazine of the Institute of Healthcare Engineering Australia. HEJ would like to thank the IHEA, the magazine’s publisher, Adbourne Publishing, and the author, for their help in allowing its reproduction, in slightly edited form, here.
The existing TUH Endoscopy department had been in operation for almost 20 years without significant refurbishment. In order to address increasing demand driven by population growth and increased screening activity, the department required a significantly larger contemporary design layout. The expansion is intended to cater for long- term growth, and allow TUH to meet the service demands of the North Queensland region for the next decade. In 2018-2019, more than 4,000 Queenslanders needed
November 2020 Health Estate Journal 19
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85
