HVAC for Hospitals & Healthcare Facilities - a PDH Online Course for Engineers, Architects and Surveyors

HVAC for Hospitals & Healthcare Facilities

Course Outline

Hospitals and other healthcare facilities are complex environments that require special attention to HVAC design. From an infection control perspective, the primary objective of hospital design is to place the patient at no risk for infection while hospitalized. The special technical demands include hygiene, reliability, safety and energy-conservation.

This 6-hour course briefly outlines the best practices in design, construction and maintenance of healthcare HVAC systems. This course contains some, but not all, of the criteria pertinent to the design of HVAC systems for hospitals and is not substitute for industry standards such as AIA, OSHA, ASHRAE, ARI, JCAHO etc.

This course includes a multiple-choice quiz at the end, which is designed to enhance the understanding of the course materials.

Learning Objective

At the conclusion of this course, the reader will learn the:

Basic differences between air conditioning for healthcare facility and the conventional buildings;
Infection control practices to minimize airborne contaminants;
Application of isolation rooms and different types of isolation rooms;
HVAC approaches for airborne infection and protective environment;
Recommendations for engineering controls to contain or prevent the spread of airborne contaminants;
Air distribution effectiveness within spaces served by the ventilation/HVAC systems;
Air quality requirements in the healthcare facilities;
Air changes and room pressure relationships of isolation rooms;
Recommended elements of ventilation guidelines for Class N - “AII” Rooms and Class P – protective enclosures;
Temperature and humidity design criteria;
Filtration practices – Dry impingement, HEPA, and UVGI;
Local exhaust ventilation for critical areas and laboratories;
Selection of HVAC equipment including chillers, air-handling systems and distribution systems;
Different types of all air distribution systems - single-zone, multi-zone, dual-duct and reheat;
Methods of estimating supply air fan capacity taking into account the potential leakages and margins;
Distance criteria for fresh air intakes and air exhausts;
System reliability, redundancy and contingencies for HVAC design; and
Energy-conservative design practices for the healthcare environment.

Intended Audience

This course is applicable to architects, mechanical engineers, HVAC designers, builders, building contractors, H & S professionals and others in the design and renovation of health care facilities.

Benefit to Attendees

Attendee of this course will learn the HVAC requirements deemed necessary for safe operation of healthcare facilities.

Course Introduction

Hospitals and Healthcare facilities environments are cleaner and carefully controlled at a required temperature, humidity and pressure. The HVAC system assumes a large part of the responsibility in maintaining these clean environments. Poor IAQ can adversely impact the patients’ and staffs’ health, comfort and productivity. To build an effective HVAC system, maintaining the quality of air as well as designing for the efficient removal of foreign particles is a challenge. The filtration and building pressure control is the most important component of HVAC design.

The course discusses the above criteria in detail and is divided in 5 modules:

Section -1        HVAC for Healthcare Facilities – An Overview
Section -2        HVAC Control parameters for Isolation Rooms
Section -3        HVAC System and Equipment Design
Section -4        Contingencies for HVAC Design
Section -5        Energy Conservation

Course Content

This course is in the following PDF document:

HVAC for Hospitals & Healthcare Facilities

Please click on the above underlined hypertext to view, download or print the document for your study. Because of the large file size, we recommend that you first save the file to your computer by right clicking the mouse and choosing "Save Target As ...", and then open the file in Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you still experience any difficulty in downloading or opening this file, you may need to close some applications or reboot your computer to free up some memory.

Course Summary

In a hospital environment, there tend to be high concentrations of harmful micro organisms. Infections, which may result from activities and procedures taking place within the facility, can contaminate the environment. A single room with appropriate air handling and ventilation is particularly important to prevent direct or indirect contact transmission and also for reducing the risk of airborne transmission of microorganisms from a source patient to susceptible patients and other persons in hospitals. This is often termed “Isolation Room” in medical terminology.
There are two types of isolation rooms: 1) airborne infection isolation (AII) rooms and 2) protective environment (PE) rooms.

The differentiating factor between “airborne infection isolation” and “protective environment rooms” is the pressure relationships.

The protective environments (PE) are set at POSITIVE air pressure relative to adjoining spaces. These areas require frequent air exchanges (>12 per hour) and require all supply air passing through high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters.

The isolation rooms housing infectious patients (AII) must be maintained at NEGATIVE pressure. These areas require frequent air exchanges (>12 per hour) and require all supply air to be exhausted without recirculation.

Understanding the role of a hospital in the community during an emergency situation where normal power is not available and determining what functions within the hospital must remain operational in that emergency are the basis for many of the HVAC design decisions on a project. The right decisions will ultimately provide the hospital with a safe and reliable HVAC system.

Quiz

Once you finish studying the above course content, you need to take a quiz to obtain the PDH credits.

DISCLAIMER: The materials contained in the online course are not intended as a representation or warranty on the part of PDH Center or any other person/organization named herein. The materials are for general information only. They are not a substitute for competent professional advice. Application of this information to a specific project should be reviewed by a registered architect and/or professional engineer/surveyor. Anyone making use of the information set forth herein does so at their own risk and assumes any and all resulting liability arising therefrom.