The Guidelines for Design and Construction, as published by the Facilities Guideline Institute (FGI), now comes in three separate volumes for the 2018 Edition. Those three editions cover Hospitals, Outpatient Facilities, and Residential Health, Care, and Support Facilities. The primary reason for the establishment of three volumes is to respond to the changing way healthcare is being delivered.
The original Guidelines were established at a time when the three basic types of healthcare buildings were hospitals, ambulatory care facilities, and residential care, with the basic requirement of each fitting into one simple volume. Since then, healthcare has greatly evolved, and patient safety has become a primary focus. This focus leads to many different building types. For hospitals, different types of facilities, such as critical access hospitals, children’s hospitals, freestanding emergency departments, psychiatric and rehabilitation hospitals all have developed with unique needs and design criteria, necessitating one volume. For outpatient centers, and with the move of more care to the outpatient setting, many specialty centers, dialysis centers, mobile facilities, and outpatient surgery have defined needs that also create the need to delineate each type. Residential care has grown beyond the traditional nursing home, to hospice care, assisted living facilities, substance abuse treatment facilities, and provisions for facilities to house those with developmental or intellectual disabilities.
FGI also initiated a ‘Beyond Fundamentals’ program to describe the context of the requirements in the three volumes. Included are detailed discussions on the requirements, how to apply, support information, and tools related to the Guidelines requirements. The establishment of the separate volumes makes it simpler for a designer to focus on a particular building type, and an AHJ to manage focused requirements for each type as well. Please check your individual state AHJ to verify they adopted the 2018 version of the FGI Guidelines.