Energy
Mitigating the risks of scalding and Legionella when cutting costs
Rising energy costs are putting increasing pressure on healthcare providers. Eve Wellard, marketing & communications manager at DELABIE UK, looks at the potential pitfalls of cost cutting, and provides solutions that take into account the risks of scalding and infection
Rising energy costs are having widespread implications for healthcare facilities. As reported by The Guardian in March, as many as one in three care homes have considered closing due to ‘financially crippling’ running costs, with bills soaring over 500 per cent in the last year.1 NHS trusts have revealed that their energy bills alone rose by £2m per month last year.2
Non-domestic customers
including healthcare providers and care homes do not benefit from the price cap announced by Ofgem,3
leaving them
especially vulnerable to escalating wholesale prices. A recent CBI survey found that business energy prices are likely to continue to grow by up to 30 per cent over the next five years.4 With both the costs of water and energy spiralling, healthcare providers must quickly find viable solutions, to reduce the financial (and also environmental) impact of high energy consumption. Care homes have always had historically high heating costs, as they are required to keep the residents comfortable and warm. Since the pandemic, care home facilities have followed anti-Covid guidelines, which require providing fresh air while still ensuring that residents remain comfortable. One possible strategy is to lower the
temperature of the hot water supply, by turning down the central heating or hot water production by several degrees, but this can cause a host of issues, particularly in care home environments with vulnerable users. Healthcare providers are forced to
consider various additional safety risks when reevaluating their energy use, so as to not compromise on the care that they provide to a growing elderly population. Much of the high energy consumption is related to very necessary infection control, and therefore cannot be easily reduced.
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Are we opening the door to Legionella? Governments across Europe are seeking new strategies to combat spiralling costs. In France, they have been turning off the lights an hour earlier on the Eiffel tower, while in Italy they have been switching off public fountains. In Hanover, Germany, they recently
tried to tackle the problem by announcing that hot water would not be available for handwashing or showers in public buildings, swimming pool showers, sport halls and gyms . While this kind of strategy that may seem to be an immediate solution, it is very worrying from a health and safety perspective. It will mean large bodies of water stagnating at room temperature,
Much of the high energy consumption is related to very necessary infection control
posing a high potential risk of bacterial proliferation. Reducing the temperature of hot water brings a danger of Legionella proliferation, which can lead to the potentially fatal Legionnaires disease, with extremely high mortality rates for hospital-acquired infections, and among the elderly and immune-compromised.
According to the British Safety Council: “It is recognised that Legionnaires’ disease
is already under-reported in the UK. It is often simply classed as pneumonia without identification of the causative agent. Despite 503 confirmed cases of Legionnaires’ disease in 2019 (according to Public Health England), research has estimated that 4,000-6,000 cases of Legionnaires’ disease occur every year in the UK.
COVID-19 has very similar symptoms to Legionnaires’ disease and COVID-19 fatality is often as a result of a secondary pneumonia, according to recent research. There is evidence emerging that this secondary pneumonia
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com November 2023
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