Data Standards for Healthcare Facility Management, Design Available for Public Review

In 2020, representatives of Yale New Haven Hospital, FGI, the American Society for Health Care Engineering, the Construction Specifications Institute, the National Institutes of Health and several other large and mid-sized healthcare systems across the United States, took on a grassroots effort to bring consistency to the data standards used for healthcare facility management and design.

The goal was to provide common nomenclature to simplify maintenance of reliable building master records, streamline healthcare facility space and equipment management, increase compliance with regulatory requirements, provide consistent terminology in risk management and support energy and operational benchmarking.

FGI and ASHE each formed a group to undertake a formal review of the classifications and align them with the FGI Guidelines and other existing standards. The FGI Nomenclature Topic Group reviewed the classifications for buildings, functional areas and spaces in hospitals. A working group operating within ASHE’s Operational Excellence Committee developed classifications for building systems and building system assets.

A draft of the data classification format is available for public review on the FGI and ASHE websites; download the document here. A formal version 1.0 release will follow once the ASHE Operational Excellence Committee and the Steering Committee of the FGI Health Guidelines Revision Committee have completed their reviews.