ACS vs HOPD
This three-letter facility performs same-day surgical procedures without being part of a hospital.
What is an ACS?
These three letters identify the nationally recognized guidelines used to inform planning and design of hospitals and outpatient healthcare facilities.
What is FGI?
In healthcare, moving a service across town can change more than the commute. It can also change this regulatory designation.
What is on-campus versus off-campus status?
Before determining how large a room should be, the team first needs to understand this: what care will actually occur there.
What is the clinical scope?
A room's requirements should not be determined solely by what the room is called. FGI increasingly emphasizes understanding this first.
What happens clinically in the room?
Two facilities perform the same outpatient procedure, but one is operated as a department of a hospital. This designation may change reimbursement, regulatory requirements and operational expectations.
What is an HOPD?
This NFPA code focuses on healthcare facilities, including electrical systems, medical gas and risk-based infrastructure requirements.
What is NFPA 99?
A hospital wants to place its outpatient clinic in the same building as another healthcare organization. This concept becomes an important regulatory consideration.
What is co-location?
Under the 2026 FGI approach, responsibility for determining clinical room needs belongs to these project participants rather than to the architect alone.
Who are the owner and clinical team?
A procedure room begins supporting interventions involving greater patient risk and more complex equipment. Before simply adding outlets, the team should reassess this.
What is the room classification?
The phrase 'outpatient surgery' alone is insufficient for facility planning because these three factors can drive very different requirements even when patients go home the same day.
What are procedure type, patient acuity and level of anesthesia/care?
This NFPA code is known as the Life Safety Code and addresses issues such as occupancy, egress and fire protection.
What is NFPA 101?
Registration, waiting, staff support and certain other functions may appear easy to combine, but these rules must be evaluated before assuming services can simply be shared.
What is provider-based and co-location requirements?
Hybrid ORs fall into this FGI imaging room classification.
What is a Class 3 imaging room?
A project team wants every outpatient space designed to hospital level 'just to be safe.' From a planning perspective, this can create unnecessary capital expense because they failed to do this.
What is right-size the infrastructure to the actual clinical risk and code requirements?
Before designing an outpatient surgical facility, the team needs to know whether patients may require this level of care beyond routine ambulatory recovery.
What is hospital-level or higher-acuity care?
When determining clinical room needs under the 2026 FGI framework, this planning process should occur before the design team simply starts assigning room types.
What is functional programming?
The architect finishes schematic design before anyone determines whether the department will operate as provider-based. The likely project consequence is this.
What is redesign or rework?
Clinical scope, patient acuity, procedures, equipment, staffing and emergency response should all be defined during this early project activity.
What is functional programming?
A project team wants every outpatient space designed to hospital level 'just to be safe.' From a planning perspective, this can create unnecessary capital expense because they failed to do this.
What is the occupancy classification?
Two facilities may perform similar procedures but require different infrastructure. This early determination helps prevent designing the wrong building for the intended clinical operation.
What is determining the facility type?
The FGI Handbook offers this optional tool to help teams systematically determine the appropriate clinical room type based on what will actually happen in the space.
What is the CRAT, or Clinical Room Assessment Tool?
This is why regulatory and clinical experts should participate in site selection before architects finalize adjacencies and shared spaces.
What is avoiding costly redesign and operational constraints?
Asking clinical and regulatory questions before drawings are developed helps prevent this expensive project phenomenon: changing rooms, infrastructure and workflows after design is already underway.
What is a change order?
Equipment is plugged into emergency power because clinicians consider it 'important.' The actual infrastructure decision should instead be based on clinical risk and these governing requirements.
What are the applicable code and essential electrical system requirements?