Investigation on the Indoor Environment Quality of health care facilities in China

A one-year field measurement campaign was conducted in two healthcare facilities in China. Both the objective physical environment and subjective satisfactory survey data have been collected in inpatient and outpatient areas to evaluate the Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ) of Chinese hospitals. The standard compliance rate was utilized to evaluate the IEQ from the perspective of objective physical environment, while the satisfactory vote was used to evaluate IEQ subjectively. The overall satisfactory vote is just unsatisfactory for the 3 A hospital (3.00 out of 7-point scale) and just satisfactory for the 2 A hospital (3.86/7.00). The winter season was found to be the most unsatisfactory season, followed by summer, and this ranking is consistent in both hospitals. Among the four major aspects of IEQ, Indoor Air Quality was found to be the least satisfied. The correlation between objective physical environment and subjective satisfactory level is low in Chinese healthcare facilities. By comparing the 3 A and 2 A hospital, the satisfactory level of 3 A hospital is lower than that of the 2 A hospital, though the objective physical environment, reflected by the standard compliance rate, of 3 A hospital is not necessarily worse. The issue of over-crowdedness was believed to be the major factor for the low satisfactory level of 3 A hospitals.