Criticality assessment of hospital building systems

Healthcare facilities are one of the most important assets in a country as their number and quality are common measures of the society�s prosperity and quality of life. Hospitals are considered the most complex type of healthcare facilities to operate and maintain as they should work 24/7 with maximum performance and any mistake could cost the lives of many humans at a time. Although Canada is one of the highest countries all over the globe in the health spending, the status of the Canadian hospitals was described in numerous reports and statistics as a crumbling status as their overall condition received a �POOR� grade based on their deferred maintenance and current replacement values. This was associated with the maintenance strategies implemented inside the hospital buildings. As a result, this paper recognizes the need to implement a more efficient maintenance strategy instead of the currently implemented approaches to increase the performance of hospital buildings and efficiently make use of the funds assigned for healthcare facilities. As a preliminary step, this paper assesses the criticality of the various hospital systems and accordingly creates a maintenance strategy selection tool for the different hospital systems. Experts were interviewed regarding this matter and their opinions were analyzed using multi-criteria decision-making tools and techniques to evaluate the weight and importance of all hospital systems using pair-wise comparison methods, representing the relative effect of the various systems on the total hospital performance. The proposed framework can be used by facility and maintenance managers to facilitate the decision-making process regarding maintenance, repair, replacement and renovation activities of hospital buildings and healthcare facilities.