Posted on 02/19/2007 10:29:34 AM PST by John Semmens
Facing a budget shortfall of £24million over the next 18 months, Epsom Hospital has removed 40 light bulbs from hospital corridors. Critics have questioned the move on both health and financial grounds.
The dimmer lighting is expected to save the hospital about £125 over the 18-month time span. Unfortunately, the overtime wages that had to be paid to the unionized custodial workers who removed the bulbs amounted to over £160.
Anne Bullock, spokeswoman for the National Health Service (NHS) conceded that “this initial foray into cost-cutting has come a cropper. We’re not used to all this efficiency folderol.”
Bullock said there may yet be a “silver lining” to the light bulb misstep. “The dimmer lighting has slowed everything down,” Bullock observed. “This means that fewer operations can be accomplished in a given time. Since each operation costs money, having fewer of them performed will save us having to pay for them.”
The downside of these projected savings is an anticipated lengthening of the already long waits for some surgical procedures, a consequence Bullock labeled “tolerable.” “Patience—keeping a ‘stiff upper lip,’ as we say—is one of our great strengths,” Bullock said. “I think that once people realize that the only way to preserve the National Health Service is to delay or forgo health services, they will rally behind us.”
(Excerpt) Read more at azconservative.org ...
As long as they don't cut back on the leeches, everyone will be fine.
Yep ... sounds like a government employee
As long as they don't cut back on them in the Operating Room...
Oy vey
LOL, they are morons. There is a item called a circuit breaker which can be used to turn off the lights. IF the buildings were wired right you can cut a third of the lights in a hall by cutting the breakers to one of three staggered fixtures. IOW one breaker cuts off every third light in hallway. Total time required? 5 minutes per floor maximum. All they they have to do is make certain they don't cut off the emergency lighting.
I guess if they ever get around to re-installing them for some reason, that will result in another overtime charge.
By the way, when they replace one or two burned out bulbs on any given shift, does that take overtime to complete?
That would require wiring 3 parallel circuits, efffectively tripling electrical construction costs. Not such a bright move.
That is how it has to be done. It doesn't triple anything actually. On a floor circuit breaker lighting panel you have two hots in the breaker panel and a hot feed as well from the generator with a transfer switch that runs off the utility as well when power is available. You are actually running 3 phase service to all breaker panels and taping each phase for lighting and outlet circuits. Simply cut off every third breaker and you cut a third of the light load. Again make certain it is not the emergency power circuits.
We used to keep a third of the lights off anyway as it was too bright. That left us a spare to turn on when doing repairs on the other circuits. All modern hospitals are wired this way and actually it saves on wire and operation cost doing it this way. A bit technical but cheaper. I'm a retired Maintenance Mechanic and was an electrician and HVAC Mechanic in health care facilities.
All hospital floors are wired three hot conductors per breaker box and you still can only put so many lights per breaker anyway. For every two hot conductors of different phases you use one neutral which carries the load unbalance thus saving the cost of one wire. The same on the electrical outlets.
Now if they want to cut their heat load as well to make cooling cheaper close all curtains facing the sun :>} A significant drop.
Good, interesting reply. Thanks, i learned something new today.
Fun to do it. There's a lot of maintenance mechanics who don't understand what is called three wire two hot conductor lighting and outlet circuits which is different than residential circuits. You can get killed if you don't know exactally what your doing even changing out a 120 volt outlet. In this case you have to make certain the neutral is not carrying current.
What I find hard to believe is Union Electricans didn't know this even in the UK. Or maybe they did LOL.
This would be the lighting lay out. Every third lighting fixture on the same circuit. If one breaker is cut off you have two more either side of it that work. In power failures only one in three fixtures work. But that is enough for saftety sake.
If the power goes off. In any hospital in the U.S. the generator has 10 seconds to start and transfer over. This is also true with any nursing home. This is so persons on life support are not effected nor in a hospital surgery except a bare minimum time.
Its not the issue what the best and quickest way to do something might be.
There are unions involved. Where there are unions, there is OT, needed or not.
It looks like English, but it's complete gibberish to me.
You forgot -- this is Britain, the home of Lucas Electrics.
Once you let the smoke out, they quit working.
If I had tried it where I worked I would have been fired. Then again at the states request they put a sprinkler system in our electrical switchboard room. A 2000 amp system and they wanna put the fire out with water. Worse the emergency diesel was in that room as well and the only way to shut it down was from inside that room. 5 years of pointing out the obvious did no good.
Yea I've read bits and pieces about them. Sounds like the Old Federal Pacific Electric or F.P.E. of U.S.A. The most pathetic breaker panels I ever had the displeasure of working on.
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