The News Room

Until Aug. 29, interested parties have an opportunity to submit formal comments on proposed revisions to NFPA 99 — the National Fire Protection Association’s safety standard for healthcare facilities.

The document, which is undergoing a major revision and modernization, establishes criteria to minimize the hazards of fire, explosion, and electricity in healthcare facilities.

During a session at AAMI’s Annual Conference in San Jose, CA, Alan Lipschultz, CCE — chair of the NFPA 99 Hospital Equipment Committee and AAMI’s representative on the committee — noted that in addition to revising the document, NFPA intends to convert the document from a standard into a code.

Lipschultz defined a code as “a standard that is an extensive compilation of provisions covering broad subject matter or that is suitable for adoption into law independently of other codes and standards.”

“Some jurisdictions across the country had previously adopted NFPA 99 as law, even though the document wasn’t written to be a law,” explained Lipschultz. “The plan is to remove a lot of ‘nice to have’ requirements so that the revised document can be easily adopted as a law without undue burden on healthcare facilities.”

The new document will be called the Health Care Facilities Code.

Over the years, as new sections and items have been added to NFPA 99, some inconsistencies and ambiguities have arisen. According to Lipschultz, the revised document will include a clear and consistent set of criteria. Further, each chapter of the document will have a consistent look and feel.

One important proposed technical change to the document is a revised definition of a ‘wet location.’ For purposes of minimizing electrical hazards, all operating rooms would be considered ‘wet locations’ under a proposed revision. In the current edition, each institution must make its own decision on whether their operating rooms are wet locations.  Wet locations are required to have Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters or Isolated Power. This proposal is very controversial, and Lipschultz indicated that he does not support it. He is very interested in hearing from institutions that have normal grounded power in their operating room suites, since these organizations would be most impacted if this definition were changed. E-mail Lipschultz at: alipschultz@christianacare.org.

Further, the document’s section on emergency management is expected to be completely rewritten and expanded based upon Joint Commission emergency management standards.

The updated emergency management section will include a new chapter on security issues (premises security, security vulnerability assessments, etc.), and will cover items such as media control, crowd control, security equipment, employee practices, and security operations.

All of these items, and any other revisions to the document, are subject to change based on public comments received by August 29, Lipschultz noted.

“After the deadline for submitting public comments passes, the NFPA Hospital Committee will meet to discuss any comments that have come in,” said Lipschultz. “On February 20, 2009, we will publish a report on those comments received, and the final document will be adopted in June 2009 at the NFPA annual meeting.”

All of the proposed changes to the document are available at:
www.nfpa.org/Assets/Files/PDF/ROP/99-A2009-ROP.pdf.
The file also includes a comment submission form and instructions on submitting comments.