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CMS adopts Life Safety Code for health care facilities

Hospital Safety Connection, January 17, 2003

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With its adoption of the 2000 Life Safety Code on January 10, the Medicare program is just about on the same page as the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations when it comes to fire prevention requirements.

This approval by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) affects all hospitals, long-term care facilities, ambulatory surgery centers, and hospices that receive Medicare funding. CMS set March 11 as the effective date for its adoption of the Code, though it won't enforce the requirements until September 11. The Joint Commission expects its accredited organizations to being using the 2000 edition on March 1.

There are two notable areas that CMS "carved out" of the Code, including a less stringent definition of an ambulatory surgery center and a provision to allow roller latches on corridor doors. A roller latch is a device to keep the door closed, but it is unreliable and may not properly protect patient room occupants during a fire. Facilities that will need to remove roller latches from corridor doors to comply with the 2000 Code could spend as much as $47.6 million to do so; because of this financial burden, CMS extended the deadline to comply until March 11, 2006.

Other key points to the CMS rule include the following:

* Reversing an earlier stance, the agency will now embrace a Code requirement that all new long-term care facilities install corridor smoke detectors

* CMS decided to allow use of a new chapter in the 2000 Code on performance-based design, which allows unique engineering solutions to address unusual building characteristics that the Code might otherwise not permit

To the read the final rule, go to http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fedreg/a030110c.html and scroll to the CMS heading.

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