Compliance News: Smoke Alarms in Doctors’ Sleeping Rooms

By Pete Kendrick, CHFM, CPMM


As part of the preparations for your next The Joint Commission survey, you may have decided to claim several occupancy classifications in accordance with NFPA 101® (2000 Edition) Sections 18/19.1.1.1.4 which state in part that, in the opinion of the governing body of the facility and the agency having jurisdiction, if patients or visitors are capable of self-preservation, sections of the building can comply with other occupancy chapters. Besides ambulatory, business, and assembly, what other occupancies need to be considered?

If you have doctors’ sleeping rooms, do you know if they are equipped with approved single-station smoke alarms? Such rooms are required to meet a small section of some other chapters you possibly aren’t familiar with. Open your NFPA 101® to Chapter 26, Lodging and Rooming Houses. You may not know it but you might actually be the proprietor of a rooming house. Look at 26.1.1.1, which states that, “This chapter applies to buildings that provide sleeping accommodations for a total of 16 or fewer persons on either a transient or permanent basis, with or without meals, but with separate cooking facilities for individual occupants…” Does this apply to your doctors’ sleeping rooms? Probably.


Section 26.1.2.1 reads as follows, “Where another type of occupancy exists in the same building as a residential occupancy, the requirements of 6.1.14 of this Code shall apply.” Section 6.1.14.2 requires that you meet the most restrictive requirements of the occupancies involved. The healthcare occupancy chapter is generally more restrictive than the requirements for rooming houses except for 26.3.3.3.5 which requires that approved single-station smoke alarms be installed in every sleeping room of a rooming house in accordance with 9.6.2.10. The Exception to 26.3.3.3.5 says “existing” battery powered smoke alarms, rather than house electric-powered smoke alarms, are suitable as long as the testing, maintenance, and battery replacement program is accepted by the authority having jurisdiction. Section 9.6.2.10 references the NFPA 72, National Fire Alarm Code and requires “new” installations to receive their power from the building electrical system. The reason for the smoke alarm is fairly simple — you want a doctor to be awakened and take action for self-preservation if there is a fire in the room where he or she is sleeping. Note, if you have more than 16 doctors’ sleeping rooms, then similar requirements can be found in Chapters 28/29 for New/Existing Hotels and Dormitories. See Sections 28/29.3.4.5 and 9.6.2.10 for smoke alarm installation requirements.

One final note, don’t confuse smoke alarms with smoke detectors. Per Life Safety Code® definitions, a smoke alarm is a single- or multiple-station alarm that responds to smoke. A smoke detector is a device that detects visible or invisible particles of combustion. Smoke detectors typically issue a signal to a fire alarm system while a smoke alarm generally issues a local audible and/or visual alarm from the detector itself.