From the November 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
The new classification system includes a degree of elasticity. The system allows for general anesthesia (nominally a Class 2 level of intervention) to be performed in Class 1 suites as long as the suite meets the medical gas and emergency power requirements of a Class 2. In this scenario, the Class 1 CT suite would not be compelled to comply with the other requirements of Class 2 (which would include air conditioning/ventilation, infection control provisions and more) to be designed to permit anesthesia for the purposes of managing patient anxiety, motion or claustrophobia.
Ultimately the goal is for architects, planners and imaging service providers to identify, from the earliest parts of a capital equipment project, their intended use(s) for imaging services by designating classes to the rooms such that a “CT room” would, instead, be identified as a “Class 2 CT room,” to define the design requirements and the acuity/intervention limits for that space.
MR room with med gas
(ostensible Class 1 with Class 2 provisions for anesthesia)
(Photo courtesy of Brandon Shultz Photography)
While significant in the shift of the internal structure of the FGI guidelines for imaging services, this change mirrors what has been happening in imaging, incrementally, over a number of years. Devices that had been purchased with the intent to serve diagnostic demands of a “walkie-talkie” outpatient population have been adapted to serve as platforms for intervention and biopsies. We have seen creeping levels of intervention and patient acuity in imaging services over the years, and the forthcoming 2018 FGI guidelines design standard nods to these changes, and deploys design criteria to help make sure that our imaging services are planned, designed and built in a way that helps appropriately respond to contemporary patient care needs.
About the author: Tobias Gilk is a principal with RAD-Planning, a radiology specialty planning and design firm, and served on the FGI’s Healthcare Guidelines Revision Committee for the 2018 edition. He also provides MR operational /safety consulting services through his own firm, Gilk Radiology Consultants, and serves as the chair of the American Board of Magnetic Resonance Safety.
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Because the pictured projects accompanying this article were built prior to the release of the 2018 FGI guidelines, the class designations provided in the captions do not mean the particular design of each room completely conforms to the standard that was finalized after these projects were built.
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