ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area paitent care vs patient sleeping

The problem is, if you see an HCF receptacle you might assume HCF wiring methods feeding it and it sounds like you could be wrong if that is all they have in their bag. They could start using waiting rooms as patient treatment areas, assuming green dot receptacles mean it is compliant.
If you can believe all the hype, there are going to be more patients from all of this "reform"

The receptacles for the machines was never the question. We already ran reduntant grounding and green dot receps for the machines.
The question was about the rest of the room, mainly the lighting, and if it is now a patient care area because of the machines. That question has not been answered, perhaps because there is so much gray area involved.

I'd be open and shut for me...

Those are patient care machines if they've got redundant grounding.

Again, that was never in question. What is in question is are the sleeping rooms now patient care areas because they can now power the machines?

If they are only using something like a portable dialysis machine and it is on a HFC compliant circuit, I think you have met the intent of the code and you would be good to go in my patch.

Ditto to Gregs comment above.

Okay, I’ve been thinking this over for a while and I’m just wondering what difference it makes if the cord caps of the equipment have a green dot? The hospital grade receptacles they plug into are just higher quality heavy-duty, 3-wire, general purpose grounded receptacles. They don’t have any special provision for additional redundant grounding connection on the yoke.
I’ve installed hemodialysis equipment in a home before and the only requirement from the manufacturer is for a 3-wire grounded 20-amp individual branch circuit with GFCI protection. The water supply and drain lines for these can be set up either with temporary connections like in the situation the OP described or permanently connected.
Granted the NEC has much more stringent requirements for health care facilities, but I still not sure that this makes a difference in this particular situation.

Just some info for reference:
If the hemodialysis equipment for some reason stops mid cycle, say from equipment failure or a power outage, it is not life threatening because there is only about 300 ml or a coffee cup full of blood in the system at any time, even though it looks like a lot more. Normally a built in alarm sounds and the staff generally have up to two-minutes to perform a manual rinseback using the saline bag hanging above. If left for longer than that, the blood can clot in the lines, balance chambers or UF cartridge and the treatment is terminated and also the blood that remains in the system is discarded. The amount of blood lost is normally not critical even for patients with severe anemia.

Kjay:
Yes, a HCF device is a higher quality device, based on the mfg literature & UL testing spec.

The 'green dot' IMHO is only an indicator, as the 'triangle' indicates IG devices.

I just threw my 'green dot' on the cord cap in the discussion, as that is the easiest way to determine IF a device requires an HCF receptacle.

We had the discussion a while ago about the legality of IG receptacles on non-IG circuits. Wouldn't the same thing apply to HFC receptacles?

Well, I think if the inspector determines the patient bed area is now patient care area, which I believe it technically is based on the definition in [NEC 2011] 517.2, then the facility will likely end up having only certain dedicated patient bed locations that are also considered general patient care areas where they can administer the dialysis treatments, unless they want to make the changes to every patient bed location to make them into patient care areas.
I think that could be an issue for a rehabilitation center where there may be a need for several of these locations to be operating at once, but the code says what it says and I think it’s going to be the inspectors call as to which way things go and what will be required.

I don’t really see that the wiring method had any bearing on this, since the requirements for the branch circuit wiring methods and receptacle type appear to be the same for both locations, with the major differences being things like number of branch circuits, number of receptacles, emergency system circuits, etc.