Presence St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, Ill., an award-winning Level 1 trauma center, recently sought to address a problem with the lighting in its parking garage, and turned to a new LED system as its chosen solution.
Presence Saint Francis Hospital encourages family involvement in the patient healing process through an open visitation policy. With 24x7 visitation, the parking facility at Presence Saint Francis has a steady flow of vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The garage is always open but has not always been well-lit. The inadequate lighting reduced visibility in many areas and did not convey the sense of a safe environment.
The Presence Saint Francis parking garage originally had yellow high-pressure sodium fixtures, which did not provide adequate lighting for visitors.
“When you go into a parking garage, yellow light does not give a sense of safety and security to people. I’m a huge advocate of bright, daylight-like light and the sense of safety it gives to people,” said Joe Stark, regional director of support services for Presence Saint Francis and Saint Joseph Hospitals, who worked with Grainger Industrial Distributors to find the best lighting solution for the garage. The installed design used Cree VG series parking structure lights and Cree Edge area LED luminaires to gain better quality of light to provide a greater sense of security to hospital staff and visitors, while lowering maintenance and operations costs.
“As the replacement was happening level by level, you could clearly see that Cree had the right fixture for the right application,” Stark said. “The most important thing for other healthcare institutions to know about converting to LED lighting – and this is critical – you have to find the right LED light for the right application.”
Grainger’s healthcare account manager adds, “Presence Saint Francis walked away with not only better lighting, it is lighting they are operating at a lower cost. They were able to save on energy, acquire funding through the utility company that is encouraging their customers to become more energy-efficient, and in the end, everybody benefited from this.”