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FGI Bulletin #14

FGI Bulletin Archives

2022 FGI Guidelines Public Comment Period Open Until September 30

ACT NOW! The Facility Guidelines Institute invites you to review and comment on its draft of the 2022 edition of the Guidelines documents:

  • Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospitals
  • Guidelines for Design and Construction of Outpatient Facilities
  • Guidelines for Design and Construction of Residential Health, Care, and Support Facilities

If you design, build, own, manage, regulate, or work in any of these facility types, this is the time for you to submit comments about the revisions, and it’s important you do so because you have a stake in them. We encourage users and readers of the Guidelines to review the drafts and suggest where language could be improved.

The 2022 Health Guidelines Revision Committee (HGRC)  evaluated and voted on proposals submitted last year to update the content of the 2018 Guidelines. The draft documents show the changes accepted by the HGRC for the next edition. At this point in the revision cycle, the emphasis is on collecting and considering comments on the proposed new and revised language in the drafts. In our rapidly changing world, your input on updates to the standards for planning, design, and construction of the health and residential care physical environments is imperative.

Interim Amendment to the 2018 Residential Guidelines Published

In response to several state authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs) who sought guidance on minimum square footages for resident rooms in nursing homes, FGI developed an interim amendment to the 2018 Residential Guidelines to address this issue prior to publication of the 2022 Guidelines.

The interim amendment is presented in a document that can be downloaded from the Errata and Addenda page on the FGI website. This explanatory document provides context for the changes made in the amendment and displays the differences in text side-by-side in a crosswalk table. We recommend that those who own the first printing of the 2018 Residential Guidelines print out this document to use as a reference.

The language changes in the interim amendment have been incorporated in the body of the text in the second printing of the 2018 Residential Guidelines, which is now available for purchase. This printing features clear alert messages in all sections where these minimum square footages are addressed, along with a large alert text box on the title page and a small note on the cover.

For those who use the electronic versions of the 2018 Residential Guidelines on the MADCAD platform, the interim amendment changes have been incorporated into the body of the text in the HTML version. The page view version on MADCAD shows the text as it appears in the second printing, including the boxed notices.

FGI would like to thank everyone who contributed to making the interim amendment possible, including all members of the public who reviewed these changes during our public comment period.

NICU Design Standards Now Available on the FGI Website

FGI is pleased to announce that valuable design standards for neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) have been added to the Resources section of the FGI website. The Recommended Standards for Newborn ICU Design has been around since 1992 and is regularly updated by a multidisciplinary team of physicians, nurses, state health planning officials, consultants, and architects. Various portions of the Recommended Standards have been incorporated into multiple editions of the FGI Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospitals, the American Academy of Pediatrics/American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ Guidelines for Perinatal Care, and standards documents in several other countries.

The ninth edition of the Recommended Standards was released in 2019 and posted on the University of Notre Dame website, as it has been for a number of years. FGI was asked to post this resource on the FGI website to help bring it to the attention of a wider audience of architects, engineers, and others interested in NICU design. The standard has been reformatted and lightly edited to make it more user-friendly and is now available for free download from FGI and MADCAD.

New VA Design Guide Uses FGI Imaging Classification System

On September 1, 2020, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is scheduled to release an update of its imaging facility design guidance for the first time in 12 years, combining separate documents on facilities for radiology, nuclear medicine, and magnetic resonance imaging. In response to changes in the industry in the last decade, the new VA Imaging Services Design Guide has been completely rewritten and now includes:

  • New imaging equipment types
  • Prototypes that incorporate contemporary hospital design codes
  • 3D drawings based on large equipment to preserve future flexibility
  • Prototypes/templates for more room types
  • Accommodations for higher levels of acuity and intervention in radiology spaces

The imaging classification system introduced in the 2018 FGI Guidelines has been carried over to this VA document as stated in Section 2.3.1: “This document makes use of acuity/intervention classification codes first introduced in the 2018 Facility Guidelines Institute design standards. This innovation allows for the planning and design of imaging rooms that respond to differing levels of patient acuity and patient care within an imaging suite.”

As with other VA design resources, the new Imaging Services Design Guide will be available on the VA website for free download. It has nearly 600 pages of narrative, diagrams, dimensioned drawings, engineering criteria, and information about fixtures and equipment associated with dozens of imaging rooms. The primary developer of the new VA guide was RAD-Planning of Kansas City, Mo., who partnered with the Innova Group and Henderson Engineering to complete the work.

2018 Outpatient Guidelines Interpretation on Exam Rooms

An FGI interpretation task group recently responded to a two-part question on Section 2.1-3.2.1 (Examination Rooms) in the 2018 Outpatient Guidelines. The first query asked whether it is acceptable for the door into an exam room to be the sole method of providing visual privacy for a patient in the room; the second query asked whether an exam room door can swing into the 2-foot 8-inch clearance required on three sides of the exam table or recliner. The answer from the HGRC members on the task group was yes to both questions. For more details, including comments from task group members, this formal interpretation can be downloaded at the bottom of the Guidelines Interpretations page on FGI’s website.

Emergency Conditions Guidelines

Have you heard? Many organizations are helping mitigate facility challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. For our part, FGI has taken a broader perspective, launching an initiative to develop carefully vetted design guidance for health and residential care facilities facing emergency situations caused by not only pandemics but weather events, wildfires, floods, arctic blasts, and other emergency situations. A committee of more than 130 volunteers is focused on eight topic areas: renovation and design for future facilities, resiliency, surge capacity, modular construction, residential/adult care, small and/or rural facilities, alternative care sites, and operational considerations.

The mission of the Emergency Conditions Committee is to develop recommendations based on case studies, best practices, historically effective solutions, and timely lessons learned. FGI is working closely with government agencies and our partner organizations to create a white paper that can be leveraged by owners, the design community, and state and local authorities.

Scheduled for release in November 2020, the white paper will highlight proposed design standards for emergency conditions. The public will have an opportunity to review and comment on the proposed standards from November 2020 through January 2021. A revised version of the emergency conditions standards will be issued in January 2022.

Please mark your calendars so you don’t miss the opportunity to review and comment on the proposed Guidelines for Emergency Conditions for Health and Residential Care Facilities.