WATER
Hydration is an essential yet often overlooked asset in healthcare
concentration, increasing fatigue, and impairing decision-making. In healthcare settings, where sustained
focus and accuracy are critical, the effects of dehydration have real implications for patient care. Therefore, providing reliable, high-quality hydration points close to where staff work can help reduce fatigue, improve morale, and contribute to safer and more consistent care provision.
Hydration in policy and planning Framed in this way, hydration is more than a basic service – it is a strategic enabler. One that calls for a whole-system approach that goes beyond minimum specifications, rethinking the entire hydration pathway: how water is stored, filtered, dispensed, accessed, and maintained. This shift is reflected in wider policy and planning. NHS food and drink strategies, such as the South Tees Hospitals’ Food and Drink Strategy 2025, are placing renewed emphasis on nutrition, hydration, sustainability, and accessibility for patients, staff, and visitors alike.
Key priorities of the Food and Drink Strategy include: l Reducing health disparities by addressing malnutrition and dehydration among vulnerable populations.
l Improving outcomes through enhanced nutrition and hydration: aiming to lower morbidity and mortality, reduce recovery times, limit post-surgical complications, and shorten hospital stays.
l Supporting staff wellbeing by ensuring access to nutritious food and good hydration, helping to reduce sickness absence and sustain performance.
Strategies such as this recognise hydration as a foundation for operational resilience and quality improvement, highlighting the importance of ensuring equitable access to good-quality food and drink for patients, staff, and visitors – particularly in areas marked by high deprivation and health inequalities.
From strategy to specification Modern hydration systems now give healthcare facilities managers practical means of delivering on these ambitions through a single, integrated specification. By safeguarding water quality, enhancing taste, ensuring accessibility, and reducing
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environmental impact, advanced hydration systems bring compliance, user experience, and sustainability together. And in doing so, they show how something as fundamental as drinking water can contribute towards safer, more resilient healthcare facilities.
Hydration, infection, and contamination Drinking water systems also have an impact on infection and contamination. Outlets and appliances are touched hundreds, sometimes thousands, of times a day by patients, staff, and visitors. Every touchpoint is a potential
transmission route for bacteria and viruses, as well as a wear-and-tear challenge for estates teams. The pandemic amplified awareness of this, but the lesson holds: reducing shared contact points in high-traffic areas and adding antimicrobial-treated touchpoints is one of the simplest and most cost-effective ways to lower infection risk. Accessibility is equally important. When patients can drink safely and independently, with a reduced risk of infection, it supports health and wellbeing, reduces reliance on overstretched staff, and helps to maintain hydration. NHS strategies, including South Tees’
Food and Drink Strategy 2025, commit to meeting the needs of diverse patient groups, from those with reduced dexterity to wheelchair users. In practice, this means specifying hydration solutions that are not only compliant with height, reach, and visibility guidelines but also offer intuitive, easy-to-use, and hygienic controls.
Designing inclusive, low-touch hydration points By embedding accessibility, touch-free operation, and antimicrobial technology at the design stage, facilities managers, hospital designers, and procurement
teams can ensure hydration infrastructure is resilient, future-proof, and aligned with infection prevention priorities and NHS accessibility pledges.
Key considerations at the design and specification stage include: l Accessibility: controls and outlets that can be operated with limited dexterity, or from a seated position, in line with NHS accessibility pledges.
l Low-touch operation: infrared or sensor-based activation to minimise cross-contamination risks, especially in high-traffic zones.
l Passive protection: touchpads and operational buttons coated with an antimicrobial additive can help inhibit surface bacterial growth.
l Consolidation of functions: combining boiling, chilled, and sparkling water into a single unit reduces equipment footprint, simplifies cleaning, and lowers maintenance demands.
l Placement and proximity: positioning hydration points where they are most needed, such as near nurse stations, patient day rooms, and high-traffic public areas.
By thinking beyond compliance to user experience, designers can implement modern drinking water systems that are safe, intuitive, and support wider NHS infection prevention and sustainability goals.
Touch-free innovation in drinking water delivery Although hand hygiene and environmental cleaning are core infection- prevention priorities, hydration points are often overlooked – despite research showing that high-touch surfaces in healthcare settings like taps and outlets are a significant contributor to cross- contamination pathways. Touch-free technology provides a
IFHE DIGEST 2026
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