When considering technology upgrades, it’s essential to consider the impact on introducing excess internal noise levels. Healthcare facility designers must also consider patient privacy and align designs and materials used with HIPAA standards.
BrightTree Studios’ Acoustics Discipline Lead, Josh Thede, PE, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP says, “When adding another layer of technology on top of everything else in a hospital, we want to make sure these details are reviewed and correct for sound isolation. Even cutting a hole in a wall can decrease the Sound Transmission Class (STC) rating by half, making it twice as loud.”
The introduction of telehealth has added another layer of privacy concerns. It’s crucial to use the proper construction materials to ensure sound-proofed spaces. Thede notes, “Getting the diagnosis of what your doctor says is so critical. We don’t want doctors to have communication issues of mis-prescribing or misdiagnosing on the patient’s behalf due to the sound in the room.”
HIPPA privacy standards apply to all healthcare locations, new construction, and renovations. While HIPPA standards do not give specific regulations for measuring acoustical privacy, rooms where confidential information is spoken should be equipped with the best sound absorption. Appropriate partition placement, room finish specification, and sound masking system selection can be used to keep a patient’s health information from being heard by others.
Alongside keeping private conversations from leaking out of the designated telehealth space, it is also important to consider the external noises that may be coming into the room. Ensuring that the provider and patient can focus during calls is incredibly important. The noise from HVAC systems, medical machines, or people in the waiting room can deflect that concentration. Being mindful of external noise is important for in-person care as well. Extraneous noise can cause unnecessary stress to patients who are trying to heal.
Thede mentions, “When adding more technology in a building, there’s more rack rooms and even the technology itself has fan noise, requires more cooling, which adds more electrical loads to a room, more air conditioning units, which add more transformers near patient rooms – all of this adds additional noise to the patient.”
Working with the telecom team, acoustics can help streamline the nurse call process. As it stands, most healthcare facilities have a specific sound that alerts nurses when a patient needs their assistance. New builds have the advantage of starting from scratch, allowing designers to plan for the required STC rating by including an acoustician from the beginning.
It is also key to consider vibration from both medical machinery (eg. MRI Scanners) and the internal HVAC systems when creating building designs. The vibration creates movement from floor-to-floor that could disturb operations and other technical care. It is vital that rooms containing these machines are placed in a part of the building where they will not have an effect on the day-to-day procedures going on.
“To be as innovative as possible and provide the best solutions, we want to be in from the very conceptual design,” Thede says. “Not considering space planning can start to introduce challenges from areas that aren’t necessarily in the scope boundaries of the project but could still dramatically affect what the end user experiences. It’s definitely possible to have this technology and no issues—it’s what we do. We push the envelope on design.”
