Healthcare & Hospitals

Life-safety code does not give a hospital a grace period. The moment utility power fails, the essential electrical system has to pick up the load: ventilators, surgical lighting, patient monitoring, nurse-call, HVAC in sterile zones, and the elevators that move patients between floors. NFPA 99 and the Life Safety Code (NFPA 101) set the expectation at ten seconds from outage to generator power, and Joint Commission surveys verify compliance with that window. A facility that cannot demonstrate that it can meet it does not stay accredited.

We finance emergency standby generators for hospitals, critical access hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, imaging centers, dialysis clinics, and medical office buildings. The deals we fund range from a $100k natural-gas standby set for a two-OR surgical suite up through multi-megawatt diesel paralleling plants for large acute-care facilities. New iron, low-hour used sets, and refurbished equipment are all on the table, and we work with healthcare operators at every credit tier.

Healthcare financing has a dimension that other industries do not: the regulatory and compliance record of the facility itself matters to lenders, and we know how to read it. A hospital that has maintained JCAHO accreditation, passed state surveys, and documented its generator maintenance program is a fundable credit even when the balance sheet looks tight. That context is part of how we structure the deal.

Equipment and Facilities That Qualify

The equipment list for healthcare backup power is specific. The generator set itself, almost always paired with a paralleling switchgear panel and one or more automatic transfer switches, is the core. NFPA 99 requires separate ATS panels for the life-safety branch, the critical branch, and the equipment branch, which means the ATS scope on a hospital project can be substantial. We finance the full panel and switching package with the sets, not just the gensets in isolation.

Hospitals that run diesel generators must maintain a minimum fuel supply, typically 96 hours of full-load runtime per NFPA 110. That drives large on-site tank capacity. We finance sub-base fuel tank systems and above-ground day tanks as part of the overall project. For facilities converting to natural gas or bi-fuel configurations to reduce diesel storage complexity, we finance those fuel-type variants as well, including bi-fuel generator systems.

Facilities that qualify include licensed acute-care hospitals, critical access hospitals (25 beds or fewer, serving rural communities), ambulatory surgical centers licensed under state health department authority, dialysis facilities (which carry a specific CMS Conditions for Coverage requirement for backup power), imaging centers with MRI or CT equipment on the essential branch, and skilled nursing facilities under both federal and state life-safety requirements.

Load bank testing equipment is financeable alongside the generator package. Most Joint Commission-accredited hospitals run annual or semi-annual full-load tests, and owning the test equipment removes the scheduling friction and cost of renting a load bank through a third party each cycle.

Timeline and Process

Healthcare construction and renovation timelines are tight and highly coordinated. A generator that is not on site, installed, and commissioned by a specific date can hold up the Certificate of Occupancy for a new wing, delay a state licensing survey, or put a facility into a deficiency position on accreditation. Slow financing is a real project risk in this environment, not just an inconvenience.

We work on an application-only basis up to roughly $400k, which covers the majority of standalone generator projects for mid-size healthcare facilities. Three months of business bank statements and the basic equipment quote get the process started. For larger hospital projects involving full paralleling plants, we move into a financial review process, but we do not run a bank's 90-day timeline. Most deals from complete application to funded close in one to two weeks.

For facilities that have an upcoming survey or are under a corrective action plan for a previous generator deficiency, we can prioritize the underwriting timeline. Tell us the deadline when you apply, and we will structure the review accordingly. A facility that is trying to clear a life-safety deficiency before a re-survey has a specific deadline we can work toward.

Refinancing and Sale-Leaseback for Existing Systems

Many healthcare facilities carry generator systems on their books that were purchased years ago with cash or financed through a bank at unfavorable terms. If those sets are still in good operating condition, a cash-out refinance or sale-leaseback against the existing equipment frees up capital that would otherwise sit in depreciated iron.

We have worked with hospital systems using leaseback proceeds to fund the replacement of aging transfer switch panels, to add a second set for N+1 redundancy on a campus that previously ran single-path backup power, and to fund the fuel tank expansion needed to comply with updated NFPA 110 runtime requirements after a state survey deficiency.

Refinancing the generator system does not change the equipment's life-safety function, the insurance coverage, or the maintenance obligations. The iron stays in place. The only thing that changes is the ownership structure on paper, and that structural change can release six figures of capital that goes back into the facility's operational budget. For a hospital facing deferred maintenance backlogs or a capital equipment replacement cycle, that is a meaningful tool.