Why Health Care Centers Need EV Chargers: An Easy Upgrade for Health Care Centers
It’s surprising that more healthcare facilities don’t have extensive EV charging infrastructure. After all, medical facilities represent the “cutting edge” of scientific development and have a vested interest in smoothing the shift to electric vehicles.
For those healthcare facilities that don’t yet have EV charging infrastructure, we’ve compiled a list of reasons that you should begin installing EV charging for your healthcare center. Don’t be dissuaded by cost or complexity: Utilities and local government incentive programs can help defray costs, and companies like EV Connect can make the process incredibly simple.
So instead of focusing on why your hospital or healthcare center shouldn’t install EV chargers, here are some reasons you should.
1.) You Have the Infrastructure
Even in big cities, medical centers are extremely likely to have ample parking space. This isn’t terribly surprising. People tend to stay at hospitals for long periods of time (something we’ll come back to soon) and often don’t arrive in any condition to have walked or used public transit. On top of parking, most medical centers have advanced electrical infrastructure with several layers of backups in case of an emergency.
This means that medical centers already have two of the biggest practical and financial hurdles cleared; they have the physical space necessary to make room for EV chargers and the electrical infrastructure to use them.
2.) People Are There for a Long Time
As it stands, one potential downside of EV charging, compared to filling your gas tank, is speed. It takes longer to charge a vehicle than to gas one up. While we’re making mind-boggling progress on this front, the fact remains that installing and maintaining EV Charging stations can be daunting.
This isn’t a problem for medical facilities. Medical professionals are known to work absurdly long hours. Meanwhile, patients in the United States have an average hospital stay of 5 days. Even if you’re a visitor, a patient at a less serious medical center, or a delivery person dropping off goods, you’ll probably be parked for a matter of hours, rather than minutes.
This presents a grand opportunity for medical centers. Rather than dropping the money for fast EV chargers, they can instead put that money toward many lower-level EV chargers such as Level 2 chargers. Patients and employees are likely to be there for a long time, anyway, meaning that there isn’t a need to invest in more expensive infrastructure. Instead, you can get the same benefits by taking advantage of the natural quality of your industry.
3.) It Gets You Ahead of the Curve
Electric vehicles are the future. The United States government intends to go almost completely electric by 2035, and large companies like Amazon are beginning their own transitions as the technology advances enough to allow for EV trucks and hauling equipment.
This means that ambulances and other forms of medical transport for goods and people aren’t far behind.
As such, medical centers should be thinking ahead and ensuring they have the requisite EV chargers necessary to make use of these vehicles. Doing so will help speed along their adoption (which will feed into our next point) and ensure you aren’t caught flat-footed when the inevitable arrives.
4.) It’s a Public Health Concern
Human-caused emissions are responsible for somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths annually. Many of these are directly attributable to the cars we drive. As such, vehicle emissions could properly be considered a public health crisis. Reducing those emissions would, thus, be a form of preventative health care.
Medical professionals should have a vested interest in reducing emissions in order to reduce the knock-on cases of everything from asthma to lung cancer that threatens their patients. This is especially true because such emissions can be localized. Reducing emissions around medical centers filled with vulnerable people is extremely important.
In Short…
Medical centers are one of many locations with a nice mix of extant qualities and persuasive reasons to invest in EV Charging. Given the number of subsidies and incentives present, they can do so with little financial risk. Meanwhile, they’ll be assisting in public health, making use of the time customers and employees spend on location, and preparing for oncoming changes.
Check out how EV Connect can partner with your healthcare facility for charging solutions.
Sources
OECD - Length of Hospital Stay
Government Accountability Office - Federal Vehicle Fleets: Observations on the Transition to Electric Vehicles
Business Insider - Amazon Says It Has More Than a Thousand Electric Rivian Vans Making Deliveries Across the US — See How They Were Designed
ACS Publications - Reducing Mortality From Air Pollution in the United States by Targeting Specific Emission Sources