GB 51039-2014Standard for design of general hospital (English PDF)

1 General provisions

1.0.1 The document was drawn up to regulate the architectural design of general hospitals, to hold to the health of the people as the centre, to meet the needs of the medical service function of the new era, to satisfy requirements in respect of the integration of treatment and prevention, dual use in normal and emergency conditions, safety and efficiency, economy and suitability, energy saving and environmental protection, green and low carbon operation and smart health, and to drive the high-quality development of hospital construction.

1.0.2 It applies to the architectural design of general hospitals that are newly built, rebuilt or extended. Other medical engineering projects may follow it by reference.

1.0.3 The medical process shall be settled on the basis of the construction scale, the management model and the departments provided in the hospital, among other things. The architectural design of the hospital shall meet the requirements of the medical process.

1.0.4 Apart from this standard, the architectural design of general hospitals shall also comply with the relevant provisions of the national standards currently in force.

2 Terms

2.0.1 general hospital - hospital with a certain number of beds, with separate departments such as internal medicine, surgery, gynaecology, paediatrics, ophthalmology and otorhinolaryngology and with medical technology departments such as pharmacy, laboratory and radiology, and with the corresponding personnel and equipment.

2.0.2 medical process - medical flows, flow conditions and the associated allocation of resources, based on the matching of medical function with the building.

2.0.3 medical flows - procedures and steps of the medical service.

2.0.4 emergency throughput - medical capacity of the emergency department of a hospital to receive emergency patients at one time simultaneously.

2.0.5 (clause deleted in the 2024 partial revision).

2.0.6 hygiene passing through area - area set between zones of different cleanliness class or different infection risk class, in which personnel and materials undergo hygienic treatment. It should include a buffer room, shoe-changing, clothes-changing and shower rooms, and a transport route for the associated materials.

2.0.7 intensive care unit - specialised monitoring and treatment unit set up independently by the hospital, usually the intensive care unit (ICU), the cardiac care unit (CCU) and the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) derived from the ICU.

2.0.8 convertible area for emergency response - specific convertible space provided, in accordance with the requirements of regional health planning, within the campus of a hospital that carries the task of treating epidemics and other emergencies in its district; routine clinical medical work is carried out in it in normal times, and when the corresponding emergency occurs its function can be converted so that emergency medical work is carried out there.

2.0.9 multi-disciplinary treatment (MDT) - manner of diagnosis and treatment carried out for a patient jointly by the disciplines concerned or by several disciplines.

2.0.10 air cleaning and conditioning system - air conditioning system in which barrier filters of a certain efficiency are fitted in the fresh air system and at both the supply and the return air openings, so as to control airborne particles and microbiological contamination indoors.

3.1 Medical process design - general requirements

3.1.1 The medical process design shall carry out a systematic process design of the medical flows, the medical flow conditions and the allocation of resources, scientifically and reasonably, on the basis of the positioning of the hospital and its discipline planning, so as to provide the basis for the architectural design.

3.1.2 (clause deleted in the 2024 partial revision).

3.1.3 (clause deleted in the 2024 partial revision).

3.1.4 (clause deleted in the 2024 partial revision).

3.1.5 The medical function unit, called department for short, is the basic unit of the hospital and should be classified as set out in Table 3.1.5. The table has five columns, headed classification, outpatient and emergency, health management, clinical departments and medical technology departments, and one row, headed each function unit. Outpatient and emergency covers the outpatient department and the emergency department. Health management covers the physical examination department and the preventive health care department. Clinical departments cover internal medicine, surgery, gynaecology, obstetrics, paediatrics, ophthalmology, otorhinolaryngology, traditional Chinese medicine, rehabilitation medicine, anaesthesiology, the operating department, critical care medicine, interventional treatment and radiotherapy, among others. Medical technology departments cover pharmacy, laboratory, radiology, nuclear medicine, ultrasound, functional examination, pathology, the central sterile supply department and blood transfusion, among others.

3.1.6 The medical flows shall be centred on the patient and shall accord with the diagnosis and treatment procedures and with the operating rules for the various medical operations; medical flows may be divided into three levels. First-level medical flows shall cover the flows between departments and relate to the functional layout of the building, the organisation of circulation lines and the allocation of areas; second-level medical flows shall cover the flows within a department and relate to the composition of the rooms in the department and their mutual relations; third-level medical flows shall cover the flows within a room and relate to the arrangement of equipment and installations in the indoor space.

3.1.7 The medical process design shall be coordinated with the architectural design and may be divided into three stages, process planning, process scheme and process condition design.

3.1.8 Process planning should carry out systematic functional planning and spatial planning around the functional content of the hospital - the disciplines provided, the diagnosis and treatment items, the manner of diagnosis and treatment, the design volume of diagnosis and treatment and the medical equipment - on the basis of the positioning of the hospital, the requirements of operational management, the investment and other conditions, and should make definite planning arrangements for the setting and selection of specific content such as medical special items, the information network, scientific research and teaching.

3.1.9 The process scheme design should deepen and complete the several items of the process planning, should carry out a reasonable and detailed process design of the first- and second-level medical flows, the composition of the rooms of each department, the environmental category of each medical room and the organisation of circulation lines, should lay down the technical framework of the network and information systems, of the medical special items and of other systems, and should lay down the process specification for the flows, rooms, medical equipment allocation, logistics and other related systems of each department, together with the design brief for the scheme, so as to provide the basis for the architectural scheme design.

3.1.10 The process condition design should deepen the process scheme and settle the design conditions for each discipline.

3.2 Medical process design - spatial quantitative calculation

3.2.1 (clause deleted in the 2024 partial revision).

3.2.2 (clause deleted in the 2024 partial revision).

3.2.3 (clause deleted in the 2024 partial revision).

3.2.4 The medical function spaces of the hospital shall be quantified by calculation, using the corresponding calculation methods, on the basis of the positioning of the hospital, the disciplines provided, the manner of diagnosis and treatment and the several medical process parameters.

3.2.5 The main medical process parameters for the spatial quantitative calculation may cover the diagnosis and treatment volume parameters, the medical furniture parameters and the technical parameters of the medical equipment, and the setting of each parameter shall satisfy the following provisions: (1) the diagnosis and treatment volume parameters shall count and forecast the diagnosis and treatment volume of the hospital and of its departments for use in the quantitative calculation of the function spaces, covering the daily average number of visits or cases of the outpatient department, the radiology department, the ultrasound department and the other departments, and covering the number of beds, the annual number of inpatients admitted and other diagnosis and treatment volumes by which the number of function rooms and their space is calculated; (2) the medical furniture parameters should cover the specification data of nursing, laboratory and diagnosis and treatment furniture, for use in the layout of the function spaces concerned; (3) the technical parameters of the medical equipment should cover the equipment specifications and the mechanical and electrical data of the medical equipment fixed to the building, other than mobile medical equipment, for use in the site layout of the machine rooms and rooms concerned and in the technical design of the architectural, structural, water supply and drainage, heating and ventilation, electrical and other disciplines.

3.2.6 The quantification of the medical function spaces may be calculated by the following two methods: (1) the number of function rooms and of equipment rooms may be calculated from the diagnosis and treatment volume parameters, the specific calculation being by formula (3.2.6), N = Q/(D x q), in which N is the number of function rooms or the number of equipment rooms, Q is the annual diagnosis and treatment volume, D is the number of working days in a year and q is the daily average diagnosis and treatment volume; (2) the spatial dimensions of the function rooms may be calculated from the medical behaviour. The spatial dimensions of each function room shall satisfy the operating rules for medical work and the requirements on protection and other matters, covering the spatial measure of the medical behaviour and the spatial setting of the work stations and of the points of each discipline.

2024 partial revision and change of title

The copy on offer is the 2024 printing. It carries Announcement No. 175 of 2024 of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, dated 25 October 2024, which approves partially revised clauses of GB 51039-2014 with effect from 1 February 2025 and states that the title of the standard is changed from Code for design of general hospital to Standard for design of general hospital, that is, from Code (guifan) to Standard (biaozhun). The cover of this printing carries the new title; the standard number, the issue date of 2 December 2014 and the implementation date of 1 August 2015 are unchanged, and the document remains a mandatory GB standard.

The explanation of the partial revision states that the revision completed the design requirements for building spaces and for mechanical and electrical systems, added requirements for space of dual use in normal and emergency conditions, raised the requirements in respect of the smart hospital, safety performance, humanised facilities and green environmental protection, and adjusted the way the medical process is calculated. Requirements were added for traditional Chinese medicine outpatient rooms, the dermatology outpatient department, the medical cosmetology department, the nutriology department and other logistics rooms; the specific requirements for the emergency department, the infectious diseases clinic and other departments were completed; content was added on new medical models such as multi-disciplinary treatment, the day treatment centre and the multi-function hybrid operating room, and on smart hospital matters such as self-service, remote consultation and logistics systems; safety performance requirements were raised in respect of the location, the emergency water source and medical gas monitoring and alarm; humanised design content on the mother and baby room, clothes hooks in lavatories and specimen racks was supplemented; new energy-saving and environmental protection requirements on energy consumption monitoring and sewage treatment were added; and some clauses were brought into line with technical standards and codes of the medical, health and building trades issued or updated recently. Revised passages are marked with an underline in the printed text, and clauses marked in bold type are mandatory and must be enforced strictly.

The revision was carried out by the Department of Planning, Development and Informatization of the National Health Commission together with China IPPR International Engineering Co., Ltd. and other bodies, under the 2021 work plan of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (Jianbiaohan [2021] No. 11).

Relationship to previous standards

The front matter of this printing carries no supersession line of the kind that names a replaced code, so no superseded code is recorded in the edition field. Announcement No. 655 of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, dated 2 December 2014, which is reproduced in the front matter and which approved GB 51039-2014 with effect from 1 August 2015, states that the former trade standard JGJ 49-88 Code for architectural design of general hospital was abolished at the same time.

The same announcement names clauses 6.2.5, 7.2.4, 8.1.3, 8.3.5, 8.6.7 and 10.2.8 items (2) and (3) as mandatory clauses that must be enforced strictly.

Note on the printed English wording

The English contents page of this printing prints the heading of clause 5.4 as Infections diseases clinic; this is a typing error for Infectious diseases clinic, and the table of contents above carries the corrected wording. The Chinese heading of the same clause is the one for the infectious diseases outpatient clinic.

The heading of Chapter 3 is printed in English as Medical process while the Chinese heading of the same chapter reads medical process design. The table of contents above reproduces the printed English heading; the divergence is left as it stands in the document.