Hospitals everywhere are asking the same question:
“Where are we going to find the people?”
Across Europe and globally, healthcare systems are facing a structural workforce crisis. EU analyses show that many Member States already struggle with gaps in physician and nursing supply and will see large retirement waves in the next decade. European Parliament Global research estimates that up to 5.6 million additional healthcare workers will be needed by 2030 and that we cannot hire our way out of the gap without transforming how work is done.
At the same time, frontline staff are exhausted. In the UK, for example, a 2025 survey by the Royal College of Nursing found that 66%of nurses had worked while they should have been on sick leave, andseven in ten regularly work beyond their contracted hours. Nearly a quarter of nurses’ sick days are now linked to mental-health issues, with hundreds ofthousands of nursing days lost each year.
With UV Smart you aren’t just buying equipment; you’re deciding how much of your scarce staff time will be spent on direct patient care versus manual, repetitive tasks.
One of the biggest, and often overlooked, levers is disinfection workflow.
The hidden staffing problem in disinfection rooms
Look at how much qualified staff time is quietly locked up in reprocessing:
- Manual pre-cleaning and wiping
- Transporting devices to central reprocessing
- Waiting for long AER cycles
- Drying, documenting, and logging
- Chasing missing probes or scopes
In many hospitals we visit, nurses, endoscopy staff, and CSSD technicians spend hours per week on steps that are essential for safety, but do not require their highest level of clinical expertise.
External research backs this up: McKinsey estimates that up to 30% of nurses’ tasks could be automated or delegated with the right technology and workflow redesign, freeing capacity for direct care.
UV-C automation is one of the most practical, low-risk ways to start.
UV-C as a workforce multiplier, not just an infection-control upgrade
At UV Smart, we design UV-C systems like the D45 (for ultrasound probes) and D60(for flexible channel-less endoscopes and TEE probes) with a simple principle:
Make high-level disinfection as fast, automated and traceable as possible with minimal manual handling.
A few elements matter for staffing:
- Short, predictable cycle times
- D45: automated high-level disinfection for ultrasound probes in around 75 seconds, with no drying stage, enabling rapid turnover.
- D60: validated UV-C cycle in 60 seconds within a decentralized workflow, dramatically reducing total turnaround time.
- Decentralized placement
Devices can be placed close to the point of care, so staff are not walking probes and scopes back and forth across the hospital multiple times per day. - Automated traceability & logging
Each cycle is electronically documented (probe ID, operator, date/time, UV-C dose, etc.), reducing manual paperwork and audit stress. - No consumables (for the UV-C step)
No chemical drums, no wipe protocols, no hazardous-waste handling in the HLD step, less logistics, less stock management, fewer interruptions.
All of that translates into something your teams can feel on the ward: less running, fewer bottlenecks, more time with patients.
Real-world evidence: one device, multiple FTEs of capacity
In the Reinierde Graaf Gasthuis (RDGG) study, a Dutch hospital compared its existingAER-based ENT disinfection workflow with a UV Smart D60-based process forflexible channel-less ENT scopes.
Key findings:
- Annual time savings:
- At the ambulatory clinic alone, switching to D60 saved 2,287 hours per year.
- At the main location, another 2,923 hours per year were saved.
Taken together, the analysis concluded that using a D60 for disinfection of flexible channel-less ENT scopes at the main location could free up the equivalent of 2.5 FTE per year in staff time.
This is exactly what we mean when we say:
This year’s capital budget can create next year’s staffing capacity.
You may not be able to recruit 2.5 extra full-time nurses for your facility. But you can invest in a device that gives them back the equivalent hours.
And this is before considering the additional benefits RDGG saw:
- Eliminating 1.548 liters of chemicals and 7.873 liters of water annually
- Reducing energy use by 3,686.8 kWh and avoiding 2,773 kilometers of transport for disinfection trips each year
- Cutting CO₂ emissions by over 8,600 pounds per year
Those environmental gains also matter for sustainability targets and ESG reporting, giving you another reason to allocate budget to UV-C.
From minutes saved to FTEs saved: use our Cost & ROI Calculators
To help you translate these effects into your own budget and workforce planning, we built the UV Smart Cost & ROI Calculators for both D45 and D60.
With a few inputs, you can quantify:
- Number of disinfection cycles per day/week
- Current time per cycle (including pre-cleaning, soak, rinse, dry, logging, transport)
- Staff cost per hour (nursing, CSSD technician, etc.)
- Consumable costs (chemicals, wipes, PPE, waste handling)
- Current equipment costs and maintenance
The calculators then estimate:
- Cost per cycle today vs. with UV-C
- Annual staff-time savings (in hours and FTE equivalents)
- Break-even point and ROI horizon
- Potential contribution to environmental and sustainability metrics
In the article “Small Clinics’ Secret to HLD and Cost Efficiency”, we show how even a single D45 in a women’s health clinic can deliver hospital-grade HLD in under two minutes while removing recurring chemical costs and simplifying compliance, a combination that strengthens both the clinical and business case.
For larger hospitals, our pieces on winter capacity and operational efficiency, such as “How Santa Claus Would Solve the Winter Capacity Crunch in Hospitals” and “Enable Faster Turnover and Higher Throughput Without Compromising Safety” demonstrate how faster, decentralized UV-C disinfection helps you safely increase throughput without adding staff.
Turn this budget cycle into a capacity win
The question is no longer “Can we afford to invest in UV-C?”
Given the workforce crisis, a more accurate question is:
Can we afford not to free up the equivalent of one, two, or even 2.5 FTE each year in critical departments, when the alternative is permanent overtime and rising burnout?
If you’re preparing your budget now and want to see exactly how UV-C disinfection could impact your staffing picture next year:
- Use the D45 and D60 Cost & ROI Calculators to model your own cycles, staff costs, and savings.
- Review our operational efficiency and capacity articles in the UV Academy for more real-world workflows and benchmarks.
- Reach out to us for a tailored one-page business case that translates technical results into language your CFO and COO care about: FTE equivalents, payback period, and risk reduction.
This year’s budget can absolutely solve part of next year’s staffing shortage. The key is to invest in technologies that multiply the impact of the people you already have and UV-C disinfection is one of the fastest ways to start.
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