INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS IN EGYPTIAN HOSPITALS

Abstract

Hospital buildings are considered a vital matter for every society, due to their significant impact on health and environment. Therefore, designing, constructing and operating hospital buildings is one of the complex tasks worldwide in general, and in Egypt particularly. Egyptian healthcare system faces many challenges, as the construction of a new hospital with the necessary medical equipment and devices has become over the allocated budget that is burdening the economy. Accordingly, development, maintenance and upgrading of existing hospitals has become an important matter and a national duty. Hence, the research problem can be summarized as follows: - The Egyptian health sector is characterized by major contradictions and suffers from the lack of an integrated environmental engineering management. - The absence of Egyptian standards and environmental engineering and health codes while assessing hospitals environmentally. - The lack of participation of environmental discussions which is related to environmental design that should be taught in public universities. This study created an integrated environmental model that provides an interactive effect to help decision-makers and operators to enhance the hospital's efficiency by proposing better solutions to the technical and environmental problems that usually arise due to the inefficiency of the maintenance process after operating the hospital, and the solutions provided often take into account the low - moderate cost options, also ensure the continuity of the hospital’s operation and prevent it from stopping. The model goes through three main stages, “The First Stage” which includes a comprehensive inventory of the hospital components, which is similar to the surveying process in which a complete listing of the facility components is made, which is divided as follows: The first part includes the structural and architectural components (internal and external) and general site works (landscaping), then the second part includes the infrastructure or main networks which are water, sewage, electricity, air conditioning,