The Importance of Water Quality in Healthcare Facilities

Health and hygiene are non-negotiable in healthcare facilities. These are places where sterility is an essential state, not a criticism. If you are in the healthcare industry and in charge of property and equipment, the health of everyone who passes through is your responsibility, and this is an area where reputation comes a distant second: it's safety that dominates the agenda.

How Are Water Requirements in Healthcare Facilities Different?

A huge proportion of what goes on in healthcare facilities involves water. It is used in washing people, sterilizing equipment, and cleaning everything from floors and walls to crockery and cutlery. Every single one of these instances needs to be examined as a matter of course. Failing to do so just brings the risk of having someone else scrutinize them when an incident has occurred. Would you expect a surgeon to make incisions with a scalpel that had just been rinsed with some water? Of course not. Sterilization has been helping keep us safe for decades.

What is the Local Water Really Like?

Healthcare facilities are highly unlikely to use their own exclusive water source, such as a well. While such a resource may bring a sense of independence in residential households, it is just too risky in a clinical setting. Therefore, we are dealing with municipal water supplied by the local government water department. This will have been treated to remove most of the impurities, but it is not sterile. While we in the US are in the fortunate position of having access to constant supplies of clean water, known in water circles as potable, which means safe to drink, and we don't think twice about turning on the tap and pouring ourselves a glass of nature's basic nectar, that is not to say disinfection and sterilization are not necessary in certain procedures.

Water purification in the form of filtration systems can take out most of the harmful bacteria as well as the bigger material, such as sand and soil, which are more visible and more obviously unwanted, and it is worth talking to a purification company to see what they suggest in your case. They can analyze what is coming out of your faucets and tell you what equipment you will need to clean them up to an acceptable standard. You will hear terms such as reverse osmosis, which uses semi-permeable membranes to keep out contaminants while allowing H2O through, and UV treatment, which generates ultraviolet rays in a clinical unit made of stainless steel where the rays interfere with the DNA of certain pollutants, rendering them ineffective.

These methods are popular in domestic and even public settings, but do not produce water of the elevated level of purity you require in your clinical environment. For healthcare facilities requiring the highest level of water purity, commercial reverse osmosis systems provide the advanced filtration necessary to meet strict regulatory standards.

When looking into specialized water purification, you will find yourself in a new world of technical terms, including premise plumbing, which encompasses everything from water heaters and humidifiers to faucets and drains connected to the building's water system.

You may also hear references to opportunistic pathogens, which are microorganisms that can harm people with a weakened immune system, and biofilm, which refers to a kind of microscopic layer formed by microorganisms and can exist inside pipes and even on surfaces that look perfectly clean.

Setting up a Team to Guard Your Healthcare Facility Water

It can be extremely helpful to set up a team of appropriate professionals within your organization, each with a specific interest or angle on the issue – managers, clinicians and administrators – and getting them all around a table with the best water purification company you can find, to identify all the potential problems and thrash out an overall solution. Professional commercial water filtration systems can be tailored to meet the unique demands of healthcare environments, ensuring compliance and patient safety.