Illuminating the Patient Experience

While supporting patient health has always been the primary, albeit obvious, goal within a hospital setting, supporting the patient experience is a goal that is quickly coming into focus for healthcare facilities – especially as 2012 marks the inaugural year when The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will use patient survey information to determine a portion of hospitals’ reimbursements.

That’s why in an often isolating hospital setting, it is important to appropriately illuminate a space to ensure a bright environment that keeps patient outlooks positive. To achieve this, the specification of the right light source – and understanding of its end-user benefits – is critical.

To exemplify the significance of lighting design, consider the aesthetics of conventional healthcare facilities, which are primarily outfitted with traditional light sources such as T-12 fluorescent lamps. While capable of providing the uniform lighting needed in an ongoing operative environment, these lighting solutions typically generate noise and flicker from the light sources’ magnetic ballasts and feature an inability to produce sufficient color quality, emanating an industrial and institutional ambiance for a less-than-ideal healing environment.

Challenging convention, LED fixtures are increasingly emerging in healthcare environments due to their ability to provide the “punch-and-sparkle” effects needed to truly customize a patient-friendly environment, with additional benefits including:

• Fixture-to-fixture color consistency when manufactured with carefully selected LEDs, which are tightly binned, and advanced optical trains to better the visual quality of light for caregivers, patients and their visitors;
• Health benefits derived from daylight-mimicking qualities and material alternatives to enhance patient and caregiver safety;
• Energy-efficient capabilities that afford significant cost savings, especially when they are used in conjunction with control systems and sensors;
• Serviceability that requires virtually no maintenance, minimizing time, cost and potential risk of patient contamination due to germ exposure.

A brighter healthcare horizon

Within the lighting industry, color rendering is typically expressed numerically on the color rendering index (CRI) from 0 to 100, with higher numbers boasting greater color rendition and daylight-replicating qualities.

This number becomes a crucial indicator in lighting design when specifying a source, especially in a sensitive healthcare environment when patient satisfaction is at stake. Traditional fluorescents, for example, which generally feature a 50 to 60 CRI, often reveal dull, gray colors and complexions, making people and surfaces unappealing. For patients in dire need of stimulation, and caregivers in need of full lighting to ensure proper examination, this seemingly simple design oversight could be a major setback towards the path to progress.

Coming to the “color rescue” is LEDs, which feature high CRI options (80+ to 90+) to achieve the warm, bright effects of natural daylight, creating an aesthetically pleasing view for patients of their surrounding environment, caregivers and visitors and providing caregivers the illumination needed to conduct in-room diagnoses.

Night and day

Beyond its color capabilities, LEDs’ daylight-mimicking qualities have been found to boost productivity amongst caregivers. In fact, according to the study “Greening Healthcare: Ideas for Your Campus,” research shows increased daylight can “lead to productivity gains in the long-term, manifested through improved delivery of healthcare and in staff recruitment and retention,” an important factor for hospitals as both caregiver demands and the demand for caregivers increases.

On the other side of the spectrum, for patients to truly achieve the health benefits of daylight, there needs to be a circadian cycle in place so they are able to acquire restful sleep. Failing to do so can result in a decrease in the growth hormone needed to heal and weakened ability to fight infection.

Merging aesthetics with functionality, LEDs’ dimming and control capabilities, such as timed sensors, have significantly enhanced to meet user preferences, allowing light levels to change in a clockwork manner so patients can sleep in their natural circadian rhythms.

Practicing self-control

Press Ganey surveys have revealed a patient’s ability to maintain control is a top-ranked factor when determining satisfaction within a healthcare facility. However, with patients often limited in mobility, the window of opportunity for them to do so is often narrow.

Fortunately today, smaller LED light sources with advanced beam control provide end-users the option to localize illumination to meet their individual needs – whether light is needed to read a book or eat a meal.

LED task lighting options are not only a valuable resource for patients; caregivers reviewing charts and medical labels are capable of doing so with greater accuracy without the reflection of traditional, uniform lighting. By eliminating glare, LEDs also benefit busy caregivers by facilitating the reduction of fatigue due to eye strain, ultimately allowing them to provide the best care possible for their patients.

Safety first

Elevating end-user safety through its construction, LEDs are both mercury- and UV-free, eliminating hazardous exposure. Additionally, as some LED options are designed to be used within range of wet location areas, such as a sink or showers, these sources allow the facility to meet its infection-prevention standards without causing damage to surrounding fixtures.

A bright idea for cost-effective facility budgets

Beyond the pressure of ensuring patient satisfaction, hospitals continue to struggle in the wake of an economic crisis, there are major budgetary concerns on all levels of operation – from medical equipment prices to Medicare and Medicaid underfunding. With lighting accounting for more than 10 percent of a hospital’s energy consumption according to the U.S. Dept. of Energy, selecting an efficient light source is key to ensuring operating expenses remain in bounds.

LEDs are providing a bright – and sustainable – spot for hospitals, using less than a third of the energy consumed by fluorescents (140 kWh) and seven times less than incandescents (350 kWh). Taking LEDs’ efficacy to the next level, some newly renovated healthcare spaces are combining these energy-smart solutions with control systems to elevate their average savings from 25 to 30 percent using the lighting fixtures alone to as much as 75 to 80 percent during peak power usage.

Those control system options for the healthcare space, which can be used in conjunction with LEDs, include:

• Daylight harvesting systems, which are ideal for areas such as lobbies and patient rooms which consume high levels of natural light within a space
• Occupancy sensors, which turn lights on in a vacant space when an individual enters a space such as an administrative office
• Vacancy sensors, which turn lights off when an individual leaves a space, such as a lavatory

As mandated energy codes and requirements to meet sustainable certifications such as the LEED in Healthcare continue to change, LEDs remain ahead of the healthcare curve to ensure environmental standards are in place and energy-savings are high.

Cool operators

Manufactured with advanced, aluminum heatsinks to provide optimal thermal management capabilities, with some groundbreaking solutions reaching up to 50,000 burn hours, LEDs provide a longer, cooler operation to maintain color quality and extend the life of the light source, while also reducing cooling loads on mechanical systems.

As a result, LEDs’ cool advantage regulates the temperature of patients and end-users to enhance comfort as well as the hospital’s budget by reducing the need for air conditioning. Combined, these light source developments can – and have – save hospitals more than $30,000 in HVAC expenses annually for a 100,000-square foot facility according to the Consortium for Energy Efficiency.

Easy access care

For traditional sources, constant lighting use is often accompanied by high-maintenance requirements in order to ensure functionality. LEDs, however, can last up to 10 years without a light engine replacement while still maintaining the same color consistency and high-quality illumination delivered on day one.

When the time finally does come to replace an LED light engine, some fixtures are becoming increasingly flexible to allow for adjustments in the field with minimal tools. These progressions in light fixture serviceability not only reduce disruption to patients and caregivers, but also save facilities valuable time and cost savings.

Lighting the path to a healthier future

As LEDs’ technological features – and the industry’s understanding of their end-user impact – evolve, these light sources continue to change the way hospitals operate, providing the ability to meet specific environmental, safety and budgetary standards while offering a warmer, welcoming and more progressive, healing environment.

These benchmarks have lead to the integration of LED lighting within private patient rooms – an industry-first debut that only marks the beginning of these solutions’ use in healthcare-settings. As manufacturing breakthroughs enable even more powerful, architectural and beam control-capable fixtures in smaller packages than ever before, LEDs – which are predicted to dominate the lighting market by 2015 – will not only continue to open the horizons of healthcare design, but create a better, brighter experience for patients and their families at a time when they need it most.

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