Products: Eaton 9155, Eaton 9130, power management software, Power Distribution Units, service plan

Location: Vanceburg, Kentucky

Market: Healthcare 

Background

Founded in 1983 as The Lewis County Primary Care Center, PrimaryPlus was built with a strong founding mission to bring advanced, affordable healthcare to the underserved areas of northeastern Kentucky and the surrounding communities. The non-profit, federally qualified health center has expanded significantly over the years, currently operating five family health centers, one women’s health facility, an OB/GYN facility, three onsite pharmacies and a dental center. The growth and progressive attitude of the company led the organization in 2006 to rebrand the multiple facilities and simplify to a more convenient name, PrimaryPlus. The company’s name — and winning equation — represents friendly, familiar faces plus a comprehensive range of advanced services for the entire family plus affordable payment options plus experienced, compassionate medical providers. PrimaryPlus works Products: Eaton 9155, Eaton 9130, power management software, Power Distribution Units, service plan Location: Vanceburg, Kentucky Market: Healthcare closely with the most experienced, compassionate medical providers throughout the region to bring “big city” services closer to home — making health care more convenient and more affordable for patients.

Challenge

An inherent part of providing an exceptional health care experience to its patients is PrimaryPlus’ ability to maintain continuous access to information at its multiple facilities. Even the slightest amount of downtime can cause a substantial bleed in the company’s normal day-to-day operations. “We are completely paperless on all of our electronic health records,” shares CIO Kerry Kelley. “So it’s not a matter of us going down and just pulling charts again. If we have downtime, it’s a ripple effect all the way down to our patients. It’s very significant.” In addition to accessing patient information, the organization requires uptime in order to oversee its billing needs. Even more, all of the prescriptions at its three pharmacies are filled online through eScripts. “If we lose power, we get cut off from everything,” Kelley says. “It’s major for us, to say the least.” Unfortunately, the company’s previous power protection solution was not supplying the vital lifeline it required. Having relied predominantly on APC in the past, Kelley reveals that not only were the units’ batteries quickly draining, but the reliability was dangerously inconsistent, especially related to PrimaryPlus’ generators. “We had some major issues with the fluctuations and sine wave frequencies coming from the generators that the UPSs didn’t handle very well,” Kelley acknowledges. “It just couldn’t adjust to the sensitivity.” The company decided that a second opinion was needed when it came to properly safeguarding its wide range of servers, SAN units, managed switches, firewall and other critical equipment. “The number one driving factor for us was finding something that was compatible with our generators,” Kelley emphasizes.

Solution

After investigating various UPS options, the organization found the Eaton 9155 to be the perfect Rx. “We were looking for something different, better,” Kelley explains. “In our research, we came upon Eaton.” Deployed within PrimaryPlus’ data center, the 15 kVA 9155 proves to be just what the doctor ordered. Kelley says he appreciates the unit’s sleek, online design, which supplies continuous, clean power to the connected load while protecting against all nine of the most common power problems, including outages, sags, surges, spikes, brownouts, line noise, frequency variation, switching transients and harmonic distortion. Even more, the model’s low input current distortion of <5% THD allows maximum transfer of power between the power source and load, making the UPS exceptionally compatible with auxiliary generators, a key factor for PrimaryPlus. In fact, the company was so impressed with the Eaton brand that it subsequently purchased two new Eaton generators, as well. “We didn’t have any issues at all with the 9155 and our previous generator, which was a complete turnaround from what we’d seen from the APC units,” Kelley reveals. “That was a constant headache, to say the least. Those are the things that make you lose sleep at night.” But the CIO is now experiencing sweet dreams, thanks to the 9155’s exceptional reliability. In addition to its online design, the UPS features ABM technology, which doubles battery service life over competitive models that use conventional trickle-charging techniques. ABM relies instead on an innovative, three-stage charging method that offers prolonged rest periods between charge phases, as well as temperature-compensated charging to optimize recharge time. “We’ve noticed a big improvement,” Kelley reveals. “Our previous APC UPSs would drain quickly. We would sometimes see those units go down in 15 minutes and there wasn’t near enough of a load to cause that.”

The innovative design of the 9155 also offers high efficiency across all load ranges, lowering utility costs and enabling the unit to run cooler, thereby extending component life. PrimaryPlus also values the unit’s user-friendly front panel display. “You can get the history and look actively at what the load is, what the runtime is,” Kelley explains. “All of the features are very straightforward.” The organization was so impressed with the 9155 that it once again turned to Eaton to help keep communication functions continuously flowing at its outlying clinics. PrimaryPlus selected the 9130 UPS to safeguard a variety of telecommunications equipment including routers, switches and a SAN, all components of the organization’s centralized communication system. Deployed nearly two years ago, Kelley says the cost-efficient 9130 is extremely easy to operate, while its slim form factor conserves valuable space in the company’s data center. “We looked at prices and features between the main competitors,” Kelley explains of the decision to go with the 9130. “A lot of it was the dependability of Eaton itself.” Offering premium power performance with a 0.9 power factor and greater than 95 percent efficiency in high efficiency mode, the 9130 provides ideal protection for telecommunications equipment, as well as IT and networking gear, medical systems and other critical environments. “Plus we were able to use an Eaton PDU (power distribution unit) with it, which allowed us to make it neater inside the telecom room and plug multiple units into it,” Kelley adds.

Implementation

When it came to installing the Eaton units, PrimaryPlus was pleased to discover that they are as easy to set up as they are to operate. And although the company still experiences instances of unreliable utility power, both the 9155 and the 9130 perform exactly as expected every time. “We still have some issues with the power,” Kelley admits, “but ever since we put the Eaton units in, we haven’t seen those units ever go down.” The company also bolstered the runtime of both UPSs by adding extended battery modules (EBMs), which now provide more than 45 minutes of backup during a power incident. Another selling point of the units was the accompanying Eaton power management software, which enables monitoring and management of all connected devices. “I like the way it works a lot better than what I’d used in the past with APC software,” Kelley acknowledges. Finally, PrimaryPlus opted to ensure the ongoing health of its 9155 unit with an Eaton service plan, which includes regularly scheduled preventive maintenance. “It goes back to, ‘what happens if your business loses power?’” Kelley explains. “It’s a major, major ordeal, so any way you can try to prevent that — such as with preventive maintenance — is always a good thing.”