While power outages for many of us are an inconvenience, there are a number of people in health care facilities across the province where lack of power could lead to a dire situation.

Jim Allen is the Director of Infrastructure, Program Support and Standards with the Saskatchewan Health Authority. He says the Dr FH Wigmore Hospital in Moose Jaw is outfitted with different levels of emergency power systems.

"So we have UPS power that protects all of our critical systems like computer systems, for example, and medical monitoring systems. Vital power and delayed vital power, which is really the power that comes up when our generators start. Then we have something else called conditional power where we can really power everything in the facility if we know that the power failure is going to be for an extended period of time."

Allen says if the power should remain out for a number of hours, or even days, they have it covered.

"We're required to carry three days' worth of fuel, so that would be the case in any facility that has an emergency power system - that they would have three days' worth of fuel."

With the number of shorter outages throughout the first week of December, including the widespread outage on Tuesday, Allen says it's fairly normal for people to be concerned about hospital patients during these outages.

"It's a pretty common concern that we have with respect to our business continuity, particularly to an environment like this in Saskatchewan where we have such cold winters. Even in the summer when we have storms and whatnot, we often have power failures. So it's something we're pretty prepared for."