Air control, filtration and ventilation technologies can improve the health care environment and help facility managers meet the special performance considerations inherent in hospitals.

Hospital facility managers must deal with rigorous performance requirements when it comes to improving indoor air quality (IAQ). What’s more, these design considerations are regulated by organizations that write codes and standards for hospital construction.

The primary IAQ standard is the American National Standards Institute/American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)/American Society for Healthcare Engineering Standard 170 Ventilation of Health Care Facilities, which has been incorporated into the Facility Guidelines Institute’s Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities.

The document lists more than 70 types of hospital spaces and a number of parameters, including pressure relationships to adjacent areas, minimum air changes per hour, minimum outdoor air, temperature and humidity. Thus, facility managers need to be familiar with the standard and the interrelationship of these parameters.

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