by Brianna Crandall — July 8, 2015—The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) recently published a white paper intended to assist health-care facilities developers, owners and managers with planning, designing, and implementing a code call system and associated call-handling processes, with the purposes of optimizing response time and complying with both clinical and building code regulatory requirements.
Code calls (a.k.a. Code Blue, Code Pink, emergency resuscitation, or Code Call in general) are considered to be the highest priority nurse call alarm events in a health-care facility, according to the paper. They are initiated when a patient is in urgent and immediate need of specialized care, and are associated with emergencies such as a patient’s heart stopping, a patient not breathing, the occurrence of severe bleeding, and more, with response time being an absolute priority.
A code call system is required for all Risk Category 1 facilities, where Risk Category 1 relates to the activities, systems, or equipment whose failure is likely to cause major injury or death of patients, staff, or visitors, according to NEMA. A Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory-listed nurse call system that provides code call capabilities will assure full compliance with the code, says the organization.
Developed by the NEMA Health Care Communications and Emergency Call Systems Group, this paper discusses how to plan and implement a code call system that fully complies with the physical architecture, implementation, and operational characteristics set forth in the NFPA 99 Health Care Facilities Code, 2012 Edition (and later).
The document picks up where the annex material in the NFPA 99 code leaves off, providing comprehensive inception-to-implementation discourse on considerations that must be contemplated and enacted to sufficiently plan, implement, and administer an effective code call system. The guide references the applicable national codes and provides a template to allow health-care faculties to carefully consider the processes in handling these levels of emergency calls.
NEMA SBP 5-2015, Considerations in Planning Code Call Implementation in Health Care Facilities, may be downloaded for free or purchased in hard copy for $32 on the NEMA Web site.
