The 2014 edition of the Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospitals and Outpatient Facilities has been released by the Facility Guidelines Institute (FGI). 

For the first time it has been published in two volumes, one for hospitals and the other for long-term care facilities, according to an article on the Behavioral Healthcare website.

The document is considered by many as the standard of care for designing healthcare facilities, the article said. Some states have adopted it as law and many states write their own requirements based on it.  

One of the changes to this edition is the addition of language requiring safety risk assessments (SRA) — "a multidisciplinary, documented assessment process intended to proactively identify and mitigate hazards and risks in the health care built environment that could directly or indirectly contribute to harm to patients, staff, or visitors.”  

Read the article.