Healthcare Building Design Recommendations for 2022 by The Facility Guideline Institute

Key Findings

• The FGI document encourages healthcare building design flexibility and innovation as long as patient care and staff welfare will not be compromised
• Laura Levi’s law requires hospitals/emergency facilities to have video surveillance and alarms

What’s Happening

The Facility Guidelines Institute’s Guidance for Designing Health and Residential Care Facilities that Respond and Adapt to Emergency Conditions, calls for updates to healthcare building design, including hospitals, outpatient facilities, and residential health, care, and support facilities. The Facility Guidelines Institute (FGI) is a not-for-profit corporation founded in 1998 to provide leadership and continuity to the revision process for the Guidelines for Design and Construction documents. FGI functions as the coordinating entity for development of the Guidelines series using a multidisciplinary, consensus-based process and for provision of ancillary services that encourage and improve their application and use. FGI invests revenue from sales of the Guidelines documents to fund the activities of the next revision cycle as well as research that can inform the Guidelines development process.

The updates in these guidelines include changes to program, space, risk assessment, infection prevention, architectural detail, and surface and building system requirements. To help keep contamination and infection low, there is a need for secure treatment rooms, capable of serving as either a secure holding room or a single-patient treatment room.

In January 2021, Massachusetts passed Laura’s Law. 34-year-old Laura Levi passed away after being unable to find an unlocked entrance to an emergency facility while experiencing an asthma attack. Because of this, the guideline updates now require that emergency facilities have monitoring at public entrances and emergency department entrances that may usually be locked.

Those Affected

These changes to healthcare facilities will impact everyone’s safety and well being on the premises. Interactions between patients and those working will be regulated to a degree ensuring safety from airborne toxins as well as those spread through physical touch. With improved means of communication, facilities will be better able to assist these patients through an improved system.

Additionally potentially tragic situations such as the unfortunate occurrence with Laura Levi will be able to be prevented. With Louroe products these faculties will have the power to communicate to those near an entrance who are in need of assistance.

Solutions

Flexibility in procedure is crucial to the success of healthcare facilities in this pandemic, and moving forward. This means there is a need for solutions that allow hands-free communication whether it be inside or outside a healthcare facility.

Louroe Product Solutions for FGI Facility Guidelines Updates

• VeriFact 525 (LE-525)
• DigiFact E (LE-875)
• VeriFact K (LE-077)
• DigiFact 830 (LE-830)
• DigiFact 890 (LE-890)

Takeaway

One can see that there is a need for accessibility and contactless communication in healthcare facilities. The COVID-19 pandemic has many healthcare facilities making system changes in the present, while also considering the future. When considering healthcare building design, designers and architects will now have to take into considerations some of these hurdles we’ve encountered, and how they differ from one another. For example, the Ebola virus did not travel through the air so much as the COVID-19 does with it being primarily transferred through physical contact with objects. This would be considered an all-risk approach, where hospital would make improvements based upon risk assessments leading to proper allocation of resources. Generally however, there is always a concern over air spread infections in these healthcare settings. Louroe Audio products can serve crucial roles in these areas where patients are physically separated from healthcare workers. Products offered by Louroe can also serve roles in monitoring and enabling communication with entrances to these facilities, preventing potentially tragic situations from taking a turn for the worse.

Link to FGI Guidelines Document