ASHE calls upon its membership to help shape the 2024 editions of NFPA 99 and 101
Have you ever had an issue with a code and wished someone would change it? Well, that someone is you, and the time is now! Until June 1, the 2024 editions of NFPA 99, Health Care Facilities Code and NFPA 101®, Life Safety Code® are open for public input. ASHE encourages each of its members to submit input addressing any concerns. If you have never submitted a public comment before, ASHE has “How To” videos that you can check out here. Now is the time to be proactive in the code development process.
Dave Dagenais, CHSP, CHFM, FASHE, an ASHE past president and the director of plant operations and security at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, N.H., put it perfectly in a webinar in December 2016. “If the state was getting ready to pass some new bills or legislation which would increase the taxes the hospital had to pay to the state, I can guarantee each and every one of you that your CFO would be at those budget hearings expressing their concerns around that increased tax. That’s an expectation of their role — that’s what they do to reduce cost for the hospital. I would suggest we, in our role as facilities managers, have a similar responsibility to our organizations and that’s to advocate against costs that may exist within codes and standards … whether we call it cost avoidance or cost savings. At the end of the day, it’s really changing the concept of waiting for the code to come out and figuring out how much it’s going to cost us to really preventing the code from coming out so it doesn’t cost us.”
ASHE’s Regulatory Affairs Committee has been tasked to help submit additional comments on behalf of the ASHE membership that directly benefits patient and staff safety. To have the regulatory affairs committee review proposed changes and justifications to potentially submit on your behalf, please fill out the ASHE Regulatory Changes Survey. When filling out the survey, ASHE asks that you submit only one proposed change in each submission. If you have more than one proposal for the regulatory affairs committee to review, please use the survey more than once.