Why are hospital buildings taller than conventional buildings?
Due to building code ventilation and structural requirements, hospitals are built with a significantly greater floor-to-floor height than conventional buildings. Floors with heavy procedural requirements are typically designed with 18-foot to 20-foot floor-to-floor heights. Patient care floors for the intensive care and medical/surgical units are designed to be 15 feet floor-to-floor. These heights exceed the typical floor-to-floor heights for office buildings by four to eight feet.
