Switching on to PoE

Clarke County Hospital (CCH) is proof that with the right mindset, innovation can happen anywhere.

As a rural hospital with 25 critical access beds and over 250 employees in Osceola, Iowa (population: 5,400), CCH is not an obvious candidate for deploying next-generation technology. But CCH IT leader Dennis Blazek’s focus on self-sufficiency and future planning is earning the hospital a reputation as a trailblazer.

“We like doing things ourselves,” says Blazek, who leads a four-person IT team. “We know if we do it, then we learn the technology, and we won’t have to rely on somebody else to come and fix it.”

It was that can-do attitude that led Blazek to embrace low voltage lighting, powered by Cisco. A familiar feature of Cisco IP-telephony handsets since 2000, Power over Ethernet (PoE) transports both power and data across a single Cat 5 (or higher) cable, which eliminates the need for separate power supplies and outlets, simplifying cabling installation to save time and lower costs.

The PoE standard has since evolved, with the Cisco low voltage platform now delivering up to 90W of power for a growing range of use cases, including LED lighting, and giving IT teams like Blazek’s greater flexibility to connect devices in hard-to-reach areas. “That’s the beauty of the Cisco Catalyst 9300: it’s all Universal Power over Ethernet switches,” says Blazek. “By making that choice years ago, we can now put lights anywhere in the hospital without difficulty.”

Blazek first learned of PoE in 2017, during CCH’s 63,000-square-foot expansion. The project faced cost overruns, and Blazek’s team volunteered to handle network cabling instead of a third-party contractor, saving an estimated $500,000. With a view to ensuring sufficient network access long into the future, he planned to strategically locate wall enclosures throughout the new spaces to simplify network routing and provide flexibility.

In a meeting with Cisco about network switching requirements, CCH’s Cisco account rep raised the topic of PoE, piquing Blazek’s curiosity. “We’re in rural Iowa, so we don’t have highly skilled electricians sitting next door available to come help us,” says Blazek. “I was never happy when we had problems with lights, or anything electrical, and we had to wait for electricians to travel hours to replace a ballast or something.”

Blazek immediately recognized the opportunity to fold lighting into his team’s services. “We want to be able to help when we can,” says IT analyst Jodi Reindl, a 25-year employee of the hospital who works closely with Blazek. “We don’t have to wait on somebody else. If we can learn how to do it and it’s something we can control, that’s a very positive thing for our department. Everyone knows they can call IT, and we can fix it.”

Lighting up Cisco low voltage power at every chance

Although the lighting had already been fully planned for the hospital expansion, Blazek still had the option to test out PoE lighting in the new on-site data center and installed Cisco Partner Innovative Lighting’s GENISYS brand.

The data center test case proved successful, so when hospital staff complained a few years later about an area in the new build that relied on only natural light sources, Blazek seized on the opportunity for more PoE lighting. “We had a ceiling enclosure within 20 ft of the location, so we were able to quickly cross connect that,” says Blazek. “Otherwise, it would have been a tricky 150- or 200-foot run. That simple use case showed the value of PoE.”

Since then, Blazek and his team have installed PoE lighting every chance they get, including when CCH converted an empty basement area into a new respiratory and behavioral health clinic—all several hundred lights using PoE. “That was the largest project we ever worked on with PoE lighting,” says Blazek, demonstrating his team could deploy lighting twice as fast and at half the cost of traditional electrical approaches.

PoE now brings light to the cafeteria, surgery recovery rooms, a materials management area, and a maintenance room, with a nurse’s station expansion planned next. “Any time we can put them in, we do,” says Blazek. “But you wouldn’t know it’s a PoE light by looking at it. I don’t think anybody would be able to tell the difference.”

Some department managers now request PoE lighting retrofits. For example, in the call center, where standard incandescent lighting fixtures overheat the room, half the bulbs are removed and lights typically remain off, with computer screens the only source of illumination. “We want to place PoE LED lights in there so we can dim them down to whatever they want.”

Programmatic light control is one key advantage. With a 90-watt-capable Cisco Catalyst 9300 series switch, which supports the Cisco UPOE+ standard, Blazek and his team monitor and control lighting on a dashboard in much the same way as any device on the network. Some lights are linked to ceiling-mounted motion sensors, others are scheduled for specific times of day, and the team has begun installing control boxes for regular electric lights as well. 

“We can program lights to run at 80% and adjust as the LEDs lights dim over time,” says Blazek. “Instead of getting the 15 years normal life expectancy, we can probably get about 30 years out of those lights.”

Ready for a bright future

Blazek is confident Clarke County Hospital’s adoption of PoE and extensive network infrastructure will continue to pay dividends. “With the team doing all the installation ourselves, we always over-cable now,” he says. Instead of being limited by a contractor’s cost per cable drop, the only question is how many cables a faceplate can hold. “We know that if we put four cables in a wall, we can end up stealing one for an access point or PoE lighting or something else,” says Blazek. “But if we had to pay for that, it would be cost prohibitive.”

The approach helps the team adapt to ever-shifting hospital requirements, as an environmental services closet inevitably ends up getting turned into someone’s office. “We do our best to plan,” says Blazek, “but we often find out we’re changing gears.”

Blazek plans to continue future-proofing CCH’s network infrastructure for whatever facilities the hospital needs. On the horizon is moving the physical therapy department into a new building, then retrofitting its original location. “With any type of construction project, the plan is to put in PoE lighting, and I have no reason to believe that we won’t put it in both those spaces,” says Blazek. “Our goal is to eventually have hundred percent PoE lighting.”

But lighting may only be the start. With 90W UPOE+ capable switches, CCH now has the option to begin using its more readily accessible Ethernet cables to power and control a converging class of IT and Operational Technology (OT) devices, from desktop terminals and security cameras to environmental controls, badge readers, and more. 

“The whole point is to make it easier in the long run for us and future workers,” says Blazek. “Everybody is so used to having your electrical, your plumbing, your HVAC as separate operational infrastructure. But electrical doesn’t have to be separate anymore, and it’s important that everyone knows that it isn’t the only option.”

Blazek and his team at CCH will continue to demonstrate that with the right innovative mindset, even a small rural company can harness the flexibility, control and cost efficiency of PoE.