A guide to acoustics healthcare guidelines

Abstract

Over the past few decades a number of guidelines describing recommended acoustics performance have been developed for hospitals and healthcare environments. These include documents from the Federal Guidelines Institute (FGI), World Health Organization (WHO), ANSI/ASA, ASHRAE, and LEED. Each of these guidelines include numerous acoustical recommendations (some that even contradict one another), regarding such topics as background noise levels in patient rooms, sound isolation requirements, reverberation times, and speech privacy. These guidelines strive to improve the overall acoustical comfort within healthcare environments in addition to patient perception, as measured in surveys like the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS). In this project, the implementation of hospital guidelines in the United States was assessed, focusing on when and where specific guidelines were instituted, the impact these guidelines have had on acoustics performance, and what can be done to improve acoustics conditions within hospitals and healthcare environments across the country.