Cat® dealer Yancey powers medical screening tents in Atlanta

As the number of infections from the COVID-19 coronavirus continued to mount in Georgia during the first week of April, two Atlanta area healthcare organizations turned to Yancey Power Systems to assist with the setup of medical screening tents.

While approaches to adding surge capacity varies by organization, the tents utilized at one Atlanta acute care hospital and at an outpatient healthcare network are designed to screen people for the deadly disease. Those who test positive for COVID-19 are admitted, while non-infectious patients are evaluated and treated on-site or sent to a safe location for further evaluation and treatment. The goal is to provide treatment with a limited risk of exposure to COVID patients.

For this site, Yancey provided a Cat® XQ125 mobile generator set to feed a 12-ton A/C unit along with a 75 kVA transformer, which connected to a splitter with GFCI outlets that provide multiple connection points around the tent for medical equipment. The setup also includes a 500-gallon fuel tank for extended generator run time.

Yancey combined efforts with another vendor so that the generator and the tent were presented to hospital facilities staff as a package to make the process simpler.

“In our walk-throughs of each site, we designated where all of the equipment needed to go, keeping in mind that they’ll need to run this for about two months,” said Peter Moore, a healthcare account manager for Yancey Power Systems. “We pointed out that if they are going to run 24 hours a day for that period of time, the generators will need to be serviced. So, we developed a plan so we can access all the units and pull them out and service them.”

At three separate locations at the network healthcare clinics around Atlanta, Yancey provided XQ125 rental generators, ancillary connections, and a 500-gallon fuel tank to serve medical screening tents set up in the driveway of the facilities.

“At most hospitals, if we’re servicing their generators, we have to be a trusted partner. If the generators fail when they’re needed, our customer’s job is on the line,” Moore says. “If there’s no power in a healthcare facility, peoples’ lives are at stake. You have to develop trust with the facility operations team. They have to know that they can rely on you when the chips are down, that you’re going to respond when they need you. And that’s what we’re doing; we’re helping them navigate uncharted territory.” 

Drew Eckford, Yancey Rental Power manager, adds:

“It’s about taking care of the customer, and that’s ingrained in our culture. It’s really about follow-up, follow through, and truly caring for our customers during this time when lives are on the line.

“We’re all in this together—any of us could be affected at any moment. There are a lot of people that would avoid even the thought of going around a hospital right now, and our Yancey team is out there servicing these locations in order to make sure that we can help our community in a time of absolute need.”