Healthcare

Featuring a groundbreaking shift to a risk- vs. occupancy-based approach, the 2012 NFPA 99 ushers in a new era in health care safety! In response to an increasingly decentralized health care system, a growing array of high-tech procedures, and new security demands, the 2012 NFPA 99 has reinvented itself to reflect a new environment where it is the risk that a procedure poses to patients and staff, not the location where it is conducted, that defines safety guidelines. Its new title — Health Care Facilities Code — signifies that it is rewritten to make performance criteria for health care facilities more enforceable and adoptable. Completely reorganized, this new benchmark advances health care facility safety with major changes such as… A new risk-based framework A fully updated Chapter 5, Gas and Vacuum Systems, including additional maintenance requirements New chapters on security, fire protection, and information technology Operating rooms are considered a wet location unless a risk assessment of the area determines otherwise. The 2012 NFPA 99 is essential for engineers, facility managers…AHJs…plumbers…gas and vacuum system installers, designers, and verifiers…security personnel…insurance companies…and manufacturers. (Softbound, 211 pp., 2012)