2010 FGI Guidelines for Healthcare Acoustics

Kenric Van Wyk | acousticsbydesign.com | Healthcare | January 18th, 2010

The 2010 FGI (Facility Guidelines Institute) Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities was published this month and adopted as building code by most states. The new guidelines are the culmination of over five years of collaborative work by researchers, architects, engineers, and acoustical consultants to solve the problems of speech privacy and excessive noise in hospitals. The guidelines are effective immediately for the design of all healthcare facilities. For perspective, consider the 2006 Guidelines which mandated single patient rooms in hospitals. As a result, single patient rooms are the absolute standard in healthcare design today. This was an overnight seismic shift in policy that affected all healthcare building projects. Well, the 2010 Guidelines are no different in their sweeping reforms, addressing a whole new dimension of healthcare design, namely: acoustics, noise, and HIPAA speech privacy laws.

Controlling sound in a healthcare facility is, of course, not as easy as turning down a big knob on the wall. Sound and vibration in a healthcare setting comes from a variety of locations and is a systematic problem. According to JCAHO (Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations) excessive noise raises blood pressure, extends patient stays, and can be a safety concern. Thus, for a solution to be effective, it must be holistic and comprehensive. The acoustical portion of the guideline is extensive and covers a wide range of issues including exterior noise to the community, internal noise isolation of patient rooms, speech privacy of your medical information, and vibration isolation for mechanical equipment.

The new 2010 FGI Guidelines, published in conjunction with the American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) of the American Hospital Association (AHA), is the kind of reform that is really needed to promote good healthcare today. Your conversations with your doctor about your sensitive medical condition will remain confidential. Sleeping in your hospital bed will be relaxing and comfortable – a respite from the typical noisy patient room

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Orion Energy Systems’ InteLite occupancy sensor collects data on the presence of people who routinely move through a space during a 24-hour period. The sensor has the ability to adapt the lighting schedule based on this data and automatically adjust the settings of each fixture to stay on longer or turn off sooner to save even more energy.
Orion’s new sensor technology also features an adjustable field of view, allowing users to easily change the direction the sensor focuses, increasing its reliability to turn on when needed.

In a recently completed project, the actual cost to operate the lighting system was reduced from $285 per high-intensity discharge fixture to $44 per fixture a year when the occupancy sensor was used with Orion’s Compact Modular lighting platform and InteLite control system. In other areas of the facility, the addition of Orion’s Apollo Solar Light Pipe decreased operating costs nearly to zero during peak hours of the day.

PepsiAmericas and Sysco Foods are among the early adopters of the smart occupancy sensor. A Sysco Foods facility in Walnut, Calif., installed InteLite on more than 1,000 of Orion’s Compact Modular fixtures previously installed at the facility. The InteLite sensors alone are estimated to help the facility reduce energy waste by nearly 1.3 million kilowatt-hours.

At a PepsiAmericas production and warehouse facility in Reserve, La., the beverage giant is installing the intelligent occupancy sensors on 155 of the Orion Compact Modular fixtures also being implemented. The Compact Modular system alone will save PepsiAmericas 334,000 kilowatt-hours. The addition of the occupancy sensors will increase the savings by another 211,000 kilowatt-hours annually.

For more information, visit www.oriones.com/technology.php.

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