Gecko's link is pretty detailed. In my opinion it sounds like you might need to write an ROI or Needs Analysis. You mentioned that you have a possible impact to patient care. Maybe document business case? Case is basically documenting how the servers will be used day to day. I have a few ROI examples for recent infrastructure purchases, as well as a User Case document. I'd have to clean up proprietary info (Work in the Health Care arena as well

). How much time do you have?