Milford Care Centre, based in Limerick, is a healthcare facility providing services to patients and residents in the areas of specialist palliative care and older people. Milford House Nursing Home was established by the Little Company of Mary in 1928 and the first Hospice beds opened in 1977.
The overall infrastructure of the Centre has changed over the years but their commitment remained the same. The current hospice unit was built in 1999 and the Centre has a total number of 350 employees.
There are 47 beds in the Nursing Home and 30 in the Specialist Inpatient Unit (Hospice). There were 544 admissions to the Hospice during 2013. In addition there are two Day Care Centres with approximately 40 daily attendees, offices for the community based Hospice at Home team and an active Education Department on the campus.
Earlier this year, ResourceKraft which specialises in energy management and cost control solutions, approached Milford Care Centre to charitably donate their core software product called Advisor.
‘’We were happily surprised when we received a call from ResourceKraft,’’ explains Pat Quinlan, Chief Executive at Milford Care Centre. “We can for the first time see clearly what energy we are using, where we are using it and the cost of it.”
A 16 channel data logger was initially installed to monitor the 7 existing electricity meters across 4 buildings. Liam Relihan, Chief Executive at ResourceKraft, said: “We are very pleased to be working and helping Milford Care Centre. The Centre can know at any time, how much they have exactly used and the cost associated with that usage. This is a powerful reporting tool for any accounts department across any industry.”
Following the success of the first phase, the centre recently decided to purchase extra metres as their focus was concentrated on the mains water metering. “We were having a lot of problems with on-site leaks,” adds Mr. Quinlan.
The County Council water bills come every 3 months and leaks can go unnoticed for months until a huge bill arrives. ResourceKraft’s water metering equipment identified a major leak in Milford’s water network months ahead of the utility bill, which helped avoid €3-€4K in wasted water and the payback on our investment was less than 2 months,” concludes Mr. Quinlan.
