RTM Consultants’ life safety assessment of your facility will be very thorough. During the assessment we may discover noncomplying conditions which are impractical or cost prohibitive to correct. Spending exorbitant amounts of money blindly complying with the letter of the code is not the best way to use your limited funds. When we find deficiencies we always look for the most economical way to fix them. When we find deficiencies that are impractical or cost prohibitive to correct we will work with facility personnel to explore alternative solutions that can achieve equal or higher levels of life safety than those achieved by just meeting the letter of the code.
One alternative that can be used with great success is the Fire Safety Evaluation System (FSES.) The FSES was developed as a means of achieving and documenting an equivalent level of life safety without requiring literal compliance with the Life Safety Code. The FSES was developed by the Center for Fire Research and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and is published by The National Fire Protection Association as NFPA 101A. The FSES is a point score system which establishes the general overall level of fire safety for health care facilities as compared to explicit conformance to individual requirements outlined in the Life Safety Code. The system uses combinations of widely accepted fire safety systems and arrangements to provide a level of fire safety which has been judged to be at least equivalent to the level achieved through strict compliance with the Life Safety Code.
The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services as well as the deemed status accrediting organizations can accept the equivalent compliance status of a facility based on a passing FSES score. Any facility which achieves a passing score on the FSES, either outright or through an acceptable plan of correction, can be accepted as meeting the requirements of NFPA 101.
RTM Consultants, Inc. has been assessing health care facilities for over 20 years all across the United States. We have prepared FSES documentation for many dozens of facilities. Our documentation has been accepted and approved by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services as well as the deemed status accrediting organizations, saving our clients many millions of dollars.