ANSI/ASHRAE/ASHE Standard 170, Ventilation of Health Care Facilities, is one of a family of documents that offers guidance, regulation, and mandates to designers of health care facilities. It is first and foremost a mandatory minimum requirement and, as such, may not offer the state-of-theart best practice of health care ventilation design. Other publications, such as the ASHRAE HVAC Design Manual for Hospitals and Clinics, may provide more depth and detail for the designer. In addition, the health care designer must refer to any design requirements from the appropriate jurisdiction that has authority. Many jurisdictions use or refer to Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospitals and Health Care Facilities, published by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Where practical, the committee was cognizant of these other documents in the development of this standard.

 Ventilation design for health care spaces is a combination of tasks that leads to a set of documents used in construction.