Healthcare continues to evolve, not just for reimbursement reasons, but also for safer and improved patient care and more efficient staff use, according to an article on the Consulting-Specifying Engineer website.
This is one reason that NFPA 99: Health Care Facilities Code was completely overhauled and rewritten from the 2005 edition to the 2012 edition and was changed from a "standard" to a "code," the article said.
The document changed it from an occupancy-based document to a risk-based document. A major focus is to minimize the overall patient risk, and to do so, the risk first must be assessed, no matter where the patient is treated.
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