ASHE victories at ICC meeting help to unify building codes

The International Code Council (ICC) Committee on Healthcare (CHC) was established by the ICC Board to evaluate and assess contemporary code issues relating to health care facilities. This is a joint effort between ICC and the American Society for Health Care Engineering (ASHE), a professional membership group of the American Hospital Association, to eliminate duplication and conflicts in health care regulation.

In 2017 and 2018, the CHC held four open meetings and numerous conference calls, which included members of the committee as well as any interested parties, to discuss and debate proposed changes for the Group B cycle of ICC 2021 codes to better align the International Existing Building Code (IEBC) with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) K-tag requirements. K-tags ensure compliance with life safety and health care facilities codes adopted by CMS.

During these meetings and conference calls the CHC developed 17 code change proposals for the IEBC, which range from changing the term patient to care recipient to better reflect all health care facilities and to changing refuge-area capacity requirements to make these requirements consistent across the codes. Over the last two weeks of April, CHC members testified before the IEBC committee regarding these 17 proposals in addition to 24 other proposals that impacted health care facilities.

The IEBC committee approved 14 of the 17 proposals as submitted and the remaining three as modified by the CHC. Additionally, the CHC was able to work with many of the proponents of the other 24 proposals to better align these with current health care codes and standards. Twenty-one of the 24 proposals were finalized in a manner in favor of the CHC’s efforts.

ASHE has developed a RYG (Red, Yellow, Green) dashboard to track the CHC proposals. This dashboard can be accessed at the ASHE Advocacy webpage. Information on the CHC, including, meeting agendas; minutes; reports; resource documents; presentations; and all other materials developed in conjunction with the CHC effort can be downloaded from the CHC website.