Many hospitals have veered into uncharted territory during the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring them to operate differently to limit virus spread, while also still caring for patients. 

For many Atlanta hospitals, that new way of working now includes tents. Lots of them.

The tents serve as initial screening locations, intentionally located away from the hospital to limit exposure for those who aren’t infected. People who tested positive for COVID-19 are admitted to the hospital, while non-infectious patients are either treated on-site or sent to a safe location for further evaluation and treatment.

Powering Hospital Tents with Generators

However, this isn’t your typical camping or tailgating tent set up; these tents need plenty of power for lights, medical equipment and AC to ensure patients and staff are both safe and comfortable.

For Cat^® Dealer Yancey Power Systems, it’s been an opportunity to step up and help local hospitals adapt to a new way of working.

From the very beginning, the Yancey team considered every detail of the medical tent set up: the exact equipment and generators required, the equipment set up as well as the type of generator power required to ensure the sites could stay up and running without interruption.

Simplifying Hospital Equipment Needs

“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 also developed a plan so we can access all the units and pull them out and service them.”

To simplify the set-up process, Yancey partnered with an additional vendor so that each tent (including the Cat generator, equipment, fuel tanks and more) could be sent to hospital facilities staff as a complete package.

Putting the Community First

The tent coordination was a little extra work up front, but well worth the effort to help the already-burdened hospital teams.

“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 during this time when lives are on the line,” said Drew Eckford, Yancey Rental Power manager.