Powered for Patients proudly partnered with the California Society for Healthcare Engineering (CSHE) in co-hosting an Expert’s Panel Webinar on the risks posed by seriously outdated hospital emergency power systems and mitigation strategies to address this risk. The panel was inspired by the discovery of outdated generators in a number of Los Angeles County hospitals, including generators in excess of 40, 50 and even 60 years of age.
The Expert’s Panel Webinar took place on December 4, 2025 and featured national experts on NFPA codes and CMS regulations, hospital facility directors and emergency power installation companies and service providers. Panelists included:
- Eric Cote, Founder and Project Director, Powered for Patients
- Robert Solomon, P.E., Chief Development Officer, Boston office of SOCOTEC
- Sal Martorana, Founder & President, Global Power Group
- Steve Works, Blanchard Caterpillar, Electric Power Generation Expert
- Brandon Morales, Service Manager, Collicutt Energy Services
- David Lockhart, CHFM, CEM, CRL, FASHE, Executive Director for Facilities Operations and Maintenance, National Shared Service Operations, Kaiser Permanente
- Joe Brothman, Director of General Services, UCI Medical Center
- Narsimha Irrinki, MS, PE, CHFM, CPE, Enterprise Director of Facilities, Santa Clara Valley Healthcare
- Skip Gregory, AIA, NCARB, President, Health Facility Consulting, LLC
Powered for Patients is grateful for the support provided by webinar sponsors, including Collicutt Energy Services, Global Power Group, Quinn Power Systems CAT and Blanchard Energy CAT.
Quinn Power Systems, the local Central and Southern California Caterpillar dealer, services a number of the hospital generators in LA County. Andrew Salem, Quinn Power Systems’ Product Support Sales Manager, took part in the panel discussion. “We take care of quite a few hospital generators, including some that are relatively new and others that are very old,” said Salem. “Among the biggest challenges for clients relying on outdated generators is finding parts in a timely fashion when repairs need to be made. We’ve seen situations where a client will have to wait for months for the factory to make a part that is no longer kept in stock. In these cases, our clients end up incurring huge rental costs that could have been invested in replacing outdated equipment.”
Brandon Morales, the service manager for Collicutt Energy Services, which services hospitals and nursing homes across California, underscored the importance of proper fuel maintenance. “We had a hospital client that hadn’t properly treated its diesel fuel tank which allowed bacteria to grow to the point where the generator wouldn’t start during a routine test,” said Morales. “The entire tank had to be emptied, and then properly cleaned and refueled. The client also faced the avoidable expense of having to replace fuel filters and fuel pumps.”
Sal Martorana, the founder and President of Global Power Group, and a panelist, said California’s stringent air quality standards and seismic requirements for emergency power systems in hospitals and nursing homes makes the cost of replacing outdated generators unaffordable for many facilities. “We work with clients all the time that want to update their emergency power system but simply cannot secure the funding from leadership they need,” said Martorana. “With hospital finances so tight, limited resources are going to investments that can generate revenue, like new MRI machines, instead of updating emergency power system components.”
Steve Works, a Caterpillar technical expert who works with Blanchard Energy, the CAT dealer in South Carolina, has studied hospital emergency power failures across the country for years. Works shared some of his findings with other panelists. “In my experience, an emergency power system that experiences problems in its first ten years of service often reflects flaws in the design, execution of the design, or commissioning of the design,” said Works. “Problems that don’t arise until a system is ten years old or older are usually caused by the failure to conduct proper predictive maintenance and updates of emergency power supply system components.”
Narsimha Irrinki, MS, PE, CHFM, CPE, the Enterprise Director of Facilities at Santa Clara Valley Healthcare, a four-hospital system based in San Jose, CA, took part in the Expert’s Panel. He said securing funding for emergency power modernization is very difficult, in part due to the added expense tied to California’s stringent environmental regulations of diesel generators. Irrinki discussed his growing use of fault detection and diagnostic equipment to stretch the capabilities of his engineering staff, which is smaller today than in previous years. “We recently installed monitors in many of the elevators in our four hospitals so we can now remotely see the operating status of these elevators during a power outage, said Irrinki “We’re looking to deploy this same technology to better monitor our HVAC system and our emergency power systems.”
“Aging hospital infrastructure is a challenge facing virtually every hospital across the country, and so we applaud the LA County EMS Agency and Powered for Patients for their model work addressing emergency power vulnerabilities,” said Joe Brothman, the Director of General Services at UCI Medical Center, a 459-bed acute care hospital in Orange, CA. Brothman, who along with Irrinki, is a member of the CSHE Executive Committee, took part in the panel discussion. “It’s important that experts and policy makers continue to have conversations about the challenges hospitals face in safeguarding emergency power and whether the current regulatory framework adequately addresses the risks posed to patients from outdated emergency power systems.”
Among the recommendations that emerged from the Expert’s Panel is requiring single generator hospitals to install quick connect devices that would allow a rapid connection of a temporary generator. Panelists also discussed requiring single generator hospitals to install commonly available monitoring equipment that would provide an automated, real-time alert to designated individuals anytime the generator experiences a problem while operating.
Without a second generator, patients in single generator hospitals face a higher risk of emergency evacuation if the facility’s only generator fails. The risk of generator failure is higher for facilities that fall behind on the routine maintenance recommended by generator manufacturers. Adding fault detection and diagnostic (FDD) equipment that provides real time alerts about a serious threat to emergency power would accelerate response by facility personnel and service providers. This early warning could also accelerate response by local government agencies, which could include readying evacuation assistance or deploying a temporary, portable generator.
In addition to convening the Expert’s Panel, P4P has developed a number of resources to help local jurisdiction mitigate the risks posed by outdated emergency power systems.
For additional information about the Expert’s Panel, please contact P4P project director Eric Cote at cote@poweredforpatients.org.