Hobart has made the healthcare sector its “absolute number one priority” across both service and equipment divisions as it joins in the fight against coronavirus.
As the hardest hit public sector institutions, the requirements of both hospitals and care homes are now central to Hobart’s ongoing policy. As has already been reported, the Peterborough manufacturer has created a UK-wide engineer taskforce of service professionals who have volunteered to remain operational, ensuring a priority service to key worker sites.
Alongside this, Hobart now has a significant stockholding of specialist machines capable of sterilising ware. It reports that demand for such machines from both catering equipment dealers and end users, has spiked drastically in the past fortnight.
The engineer taskforce – many of whom have volunteered to work out of their normal shift patterns and on days-off to ensure support and coverage – has received specialist training to understand how to operate safely in ‘at risk’ Covid-19 sites and been working in the field for the past month.
Significant successes include:
• Attendance within an hour to a Scottish hospital trust, and a first-time fix after a catering unit had completely gone down.
• A call logged at Glasgow’s Gartnavel Hospital at 13:12pm after a flight type dishwasher, critical to the catering operation, went down. The engineer arrived at 14.12 to get it back up and running.
• Engineers on site at a specialist a COVID-19 ward at Chorley and Ribble hospital to repair a dishwasher that ensured patients had properly sanitised crockery.
• An urgent call from a care home on a Sunday to attend and fix a machine that had gone down. An engineer attended the same day, ordered the parts required and returned on the Tuesday to get the machine operational.
• A 10-hour response and first-time fix at St Thomas’ Hospital.
Hobart Managing Director, Equipment Division UK, David Riley expressed his pride at the response and the role Hobart is playing. He said, “The healthcare sector is now our absolute number one priority and we’re obviously part of a much larger supply chain, with the heroes at the very top.
'But if we can retain our robustness, plan properly and flex when necessary, we have a key role – an obligation – in keeping healthcare sites across the UK operational.”
Managing Director of Hobart’s Service Division, Keith Mackie, added, “Our engineers are giving everything they can to keep these sites operational at the most critical of times – they are selfless and professional to the last and I want to personally thank each and every one of them, and the entire Hobart team, for rolling with the punches and going above and beyond for a sector in desperate need.
'There’s lots more to do, and we’ll continue to approach this unprecedented challenge in as innovative a way as we can.”