Apply NFPA 99 risk categories 1-4 to determine medical gas system requirements for a facility

Steps

1. Confirm the four NFPA 99 risk categories: Category 1 (failure likely to cause major injury or death), Category 2 (failure likely to cause minor injury), Category 3 (failure unlikely to cause injury but may cause patient/caregiver discomfort), Category 4 (failure has no impact on patient care)
2. Confirm category assignment is based on a documented, defined risk-assessment procedure (NFPA 99 Chapter 4) applied per system/space — not automatically determined by building occupancy type or facility label alone
3. Confirm the risk assessment should consider factors such as patient population/acuity, procedures performed, anesthesia/sedation levels used, and equipment/systems involved, and reference an accepted risk-assessment methodology (NFPA 99 Annex A cites examples such as ISO/IEC 31010, NFPA 551, and SEMI S10)
4. Confirm the assigned category then drives the specific technical requirements (redundancy, alarm monitoring, testing frequency, system components) applicable to that space/system under the rest of NFPA 99
5. Confirm and document the risk assessment in the facility's records, since NFPA 99 requires the categorization procedure itself to be documented, not just the resulting category