Relocatable Power Taps in Healthcare
Can You Mount a Power Strip to the Wall? The “Attached to Building Surfaces” Dilemma, Decoded

You’ve heard this conversation. You may have been in it.

I’m sure you’ve heard these questions. Probably this week. Probably in a hallway, from someone holding a clipboard, about a fifty-dollar power strip that was minding its own business:

Here is the part that should bother you: the clipboard is right about almost every line. Not one of those rules is invented. Every one of them is a real requirement, quoted slightly wrong, by someone who half-remembers where it came from — which is exactly how a real rule turns into a hallway argument. Both people in that exchange are reading a real book. They just are not reading the same one, and neither can name it. So before we get to the sentence that started this article, let’s put every book on the table.

If one object in a hospital had to answer to everybody, it would be this one

Play a quick game. Name the single most over-regulated object in a hospital. Not the generator — it has one standard, NFPA 110, and everyone agrees on it. Not the sprinkler system. Not the fire door, which at least has the decency to keep its rules in NFPA 80. The winner is the fifty-dollar power strip under the nurse’s desk. It answers to more rulebooks than the MRI, and it has the nerve to come in a blister pack.

Anyone who has worked in a hospital environment knows the pattern. Power strip, power supply, surge protector, “the splitter” — whatever the floor calls it — gets viewed and enforced differently from person to person, year to year, survey to survey. Biomed says one thing. Facilities says another. The Joint Commission surveyor writes it up, the fire marshal walks right past it, and IT quietly buys forty more. Everyone is annoyed, and rightfully so — there are simply a lot of books. Here they are, all of them.

Who has an opinion about your power strip

Thirteen rows. Fourteen if you count the insurance carrier’s recommendations, which are not law and are enforced anyway at renewal. Every one of these is real, and the section numbers are the ones each book uses in the edition it is enforced under — which is its own problem, covered below.

Even the manufacturer joins in: one strip, three correct numbers

Take a real one. The Leviton 5306M-1N7 is a six-outlet medical-grade strip with a seven-foot cord, certified to UL 1363A and UL 60601-1, the pair CMS accepts in the patient care vicinity. Its instruction sheet (Leviton PK-93031) is two pages and manages to add several rules of its own to the thirteen above:

• The limit. The strip carries a 15-amp resettable breaker. Its own label says 12 amps, regulatory derated (the continuous-load convention). NFPA 99 says 75 percent of the cord’s ampacity, which on a 15-amp cord is 11.25 amps. Three numbers for one limit — 15, 12 and 11.25 — and every one of them is correct in its own book. The one that binds you on a survey is the smallest.
• The mounting. “Medical strips can be surface mounted using mounting holes on either end of strip … attach strip using screws (not supplied).” Screws. Tools. A permanent mount, from the manufacturer of a special-purpose tap — exactly what UL 1363 forbids for an ordinary strip and exactly what UL 1363A and NFPA 99 require for this one, provided the surface is the equipment. The sheet says surface; the code says which surface. That gap is where half of this article lives.
• The crash cart rule. “Only 2 and 4 outlet Medical Grade power strips can be used with emergency trolley carts.” A six-outlet model on a code cart is a manufacturer-instruction violation, therefore a listing violation, therefore an NEC 110.3(B) finding — and no fire code anywhere would have told you.
• The monthly chore. “Check status LED’s monthly … Check circuit breaker (CB) status monthly.” That is a maintenance interval, written by the manufacturer, feeding straight into NFPA 99’s “integrity regularly verified and documented.”
• The obvious one, restated. “Do not plug into another re-locatable power tap or extension cord.” Same sentence as UL, OSHA, the IFC and every policy in the stack, now also on the paper in the box.
• The surge footnote. On the surge-protective models: do not install where there is less than 30 feet of wire between the receptacle and the service panel. A distance rule for a power strip, which almost nobody has ever measured.
• The mark. Compliance to the UL standards was determined by ETL, not UL. CMS says “meet UL 1363A” — the standard, not the laboratory — and OSHA recognizes both labs. A surveyor who wants a UL logo specifically is asking for something the rule does not say.

The sentence everyone quotes, and the word everyone skips

If you have walked a hospital with a surveyor, a fire inspector or your own safety committee, you have heard some version of this: “That power strip is attached to the building. The NEC says flexible cords can’t be attached to building surfaces. Take it down.” Sometimes it comes with a section number — 400.8, or 400.12, depending on which edition the speaker learned from — and sometimes it comes with a screenshot. Miller sent me both.

The sentence is real. Here it is, from the edition CMS actually enforces, and again from the one Georgia adopts:

NFPA 70-2011 §400.8 Uses Not Permitted. Unless specifically permitted in 400.7, flexible cords and cables shall not be used for the following: … (4) Where attached to building surfaces.

NFPA 70-2023 §400.12 — same list, same item (4), same words. Only the number moved.

Now read it once more and find the subject of the sentence. It is not “power strips.” It is not “relocatable power taps.” It is flexible cords and cables. Article 400 is the cord article. Every one of its seven prohibited uses — substitute for fixed wiring, run through walls, run through doorways, attached to surfaces, concealed above ceilings, installed in raceways, subject to damage — describes something you do with the cord. The NEC has never contained a sentence about an outlet-strip enclosure being fastened to anything.

Three pictures, not one

The confusion survives because three different situations get described with the same phrase. Separate them and the code separates itself.

What Article 400 is actually for

Article 400 exists to keep flexible cord from becoming the building’s wiring. Cord is designed to flex; the wiring methods in Chapter 3 are designed to stay put behind protection for fifty years. The “uses not permitted” list is a description of cord pretending to be Chapter 3 wiring: a cord that has been stapled along a baseboard, run up inside a wall, passed through a doorway and left there to feed a device that never moves. Item (4) — attached to building surfaces — is about staples and cable clips on the cord. The exceptions prove it: 368.56(B) covers cord drops from plug-in busway, and the 590.4 exception (added in the 2020 edition) covers temporary wiring. Both are about routing cord, not mounting devices.

Meanwhile the “uses permitted” list — §400.7 in 2011, §400.10 today — expressly allows cord for “connection of utilization equipment to facilitate frequent interchange” and requires, for that use, an attachment plug energized from a receptacle outlet. That is a relocatable power tap’s entire job description. A listed strip, plugged directly into a wall receptacle, with its cord hanging free, is Article 400 working exactly as written — wherever the strip’s body happens to be resting.

The section that really governs mounting: 110.3(B), and what UL says

NEC 110.3(B) is one sentence: listed equipment shall be installed and used in accordance with the instructions included in the listing. OSHA carries the identical sentence at 29 CFR 1910.303(b)(2), and OSHA’s 2002 interpretation letter on power strips does nothing more than point at it and at UL’s conditions. So the question “may I mount this strip?” is really “what does its listing say about mounting?”

UL 1363 — the ordinary strip

UL 1363 is the standard for relocatable power taps — the general-purpose strip. Its scope says the product shall not serve as the fixed wiring of a structure or of fixed furnishings such as permanent countertops. It says an RPT is not intended to be permanently mounted, and its mounting section is titled Temporary Mounting Means: a tool shall not be required to dismount an RPT. UL’s published guide information for the category (XBYS) adds the line that OSHA gets blamed for but did not write: relocatable power taps are not intended to be permanently secured to building structures, tables, work benches or similar structures, nor to be used as a substitute for fixed wiring. The same guide information requires direct connection to a permanently installed branch-circuit receptacle, prohibits series connection to other RPTs or to extension cords, and says the cord is not to be routed through walls, windows, ceilings or floors.

Put those together and the folk rule turns out to be half right, for the wrong reason:

• Keyhole slots over two screws: a temporary mounting means. The strip lifts off without a tool. Inside the listing. The screws are in the wall; the strip is not secured to it.
• Screws driven through the housing, or a bracket that needs a screwdriver to release: outside the listing. UL’s current edition is explicit that a cord-connected unit meant for fixed, tool-secured mounting to furnishings is a different product — a furniture power distribution unit under UL 962A — and there is no listing at all for one screwed to a wall.
• The finding, when there is one: “listed relocatable power tap installed contrary to its listing (permanently secured to the structure) — NEC 110.3(B); OSHA 1910.303(b)(2).” Not 400.12(4). If you cite the cord section for the strip’s bracket, the facility’s engineer will read the section back to you, and will be right.

UL 1363A, UL 60601-1, UL 2930 — the medical grades

UL 1363A is UL’s Outline of Investigation for special-purpose relocatable power taps — the SPRPT. It starts from everything in UL 1363 and adds hospital-grade plug and receptacles, the leakage-current regime that medical equipment lives under, and one line that turns the mounting question inside out: the SPRPT shall be permanently attached to the medical equipment by a means such that it is only removable with the use of a tool. Note the object of that sentence. Not the wall. The equipment. UL 1363A yields a component recognition rather than a stand-alone listing, which is why you will see it printed on strips alongside the 60601-1 mark.

UL 60601-1 is the medical-electrical-equipment standard itself. A multiple socket-outlet that is part of a medical-electrical system built under it — the manufacturer’s cart with its own outlet block — is the second listing CMS accepts. UL 2930 is newer: Health Care Facility Outlet Assemblies, permanently mounted hospital-grade assemblies for benches, carts and stands, with a patient-equipment grounding terminal. It is a good product and UL says it is intended for patient care vicinities. It is also not named in CMS K-920 or in the Joint Commission FAQ, which were written before it existed. If you deploy UL 2930 in the vicinity, have that conversation with your surveyor before the survey, not during it.

NFPA 99-2012 §10.2.3.6: the rule that requires attachment

This is the section Miller’s source pack reproduced, and it is the one that settles the healthcare half of the dilemma. In the 2012 edition it is titled Multiple Outlet Connection. Paraphrased, because the text is NFPA’s: two or more receptacles supplied by a flexible cord may be used to power the plug-connected components of a movable equipment assembly that is rack-, table-, pedestal- or cart-mounted, provided that all of the listed conditions are met. The conditions, as CMS enforces them:

1. The receptacles are permanently attached to the equipment assembly.
2. The sum of the ampacity of everything plugged in does not exceed 75 percent of the ampacity of the flexible cord supplying the receptacles.
3. The cord’s ampacity complies with NFPA 70.
4. The electrical and mechanical integrity of the assembly is regularly verified and documented.

That third LED on the label — LOAD MONITOR, exceeded NFPA 99 current limit when lit — is the strip in the video above. It is a real product feature, not a marketing claim: the label states the exact rule this section just walked through, printed on the device itself.

Read condition (1) against the headwall strip. The permission exists for an equipment assembly — a cart with a monitor, a pump and a warmer on it, sharing one cord to the wall so that the assembly can be leakage-tested as a unit and rolled to the next room as a unit. A strip fastened to the wall serves no assembly. It is a wall receptacle extension, which is precisely the thing the patient-care-vicinity rules were written to keep out of the six-foot zone. CMS’s surveyor chart for the tag lists “the receptacles are not permanently attached to the PCREE” as a K-920 deficiency in so many words.

So the correct sentence for the vicinity is the reverse of the folk rule: you must attach the strip — to the equipment, and never to the building. And if the room genuinely needs more receptacles, the answer is more receptacles. NFPA 99-2012 §6.3.2.2.6 sets minimum counts per bed location, and FGI’s receptacle guidance says outlets on relocatable power taps or portable equipment do not count toward them.

§10.2.4 — adapters and extension cords

The neighbouring section is where the rest of the K-920 language lives. Three-prong-to-two-prong adapters are prohibited outright in every edition. Other adapters and extension cords are permitted only where listed for the purpose, and CMS reads the NEC’s temporary-wiring rule (590.3(D)) alongside it: an extension cord used temporarily is removed immediately when the purpose it was installed for is done, and is never a substitute for fixed wiring.

How CMS and The Joint Commission enforce it

The regulatory history is short and worth knowing, because the 2014 memo still circulates as if it were current.

• 2014 — the categorical waiver. CMS was still surveying to the 1999 edition of NFPA 99, which had no workable provision for power strips on equipment carts. S&C 14-46-LSC (September 26, 2014) let facilities elect the 2012 §10.2.3.6 conditions early, set the UL 1363A / UL 60601-1 requirement for patient-care equipment and UL 1363 for everything else, and confined strips in the patient care vicinity to patient-care equipment.
• 2016 — the 2012 codes become law. The final rule at 81 FR 26872 (May 4, 2016; effective July 5, 2016; surveys from November 1, 2016) incorporated NFPA 101-2012 and NFPA 99-2012 with TIAs 12-2 through 12-6 into the Conditions of Participation — for hospitals at 42 CFR 482.41(c), for long-term care at 483.90(b). The waiver’s job was done; its conditions became the code.
• K-0920 — the tag. Electrical Equipment — Power Cords and Extension Cords. It prints as K 920 on Form CMS-2567 and K0920 in the survey software; it is one tag. The surveyor text is public record and reads, in substance: power strips in a patient care vicinity are only used for components of movable patient-care-related electrical equipment assembled by qualified personnel meeting §10.2.3.6; not for non-PCREE such as personal electronics, except in long-term-care resident rooms that use no PCREE; strips for PCREE meet UL 1363A or UL 60601-1; strips for non-PCREE in patient care rooms outside the vicinity meet UL 1363; in non-patient-care rooms strips meet other UL standards; all strips are used with general precautions; extension cords are not a substitute for fixed wiring and temporary ones are removed when done. Its citations: NFPA 99-2012 §10.2.3.6 and §10.2.4; NFPA 70-2011 §400-8 and §590.3(D); TIA 12-5.
• The Joint Commission. The Standards FAQ Where can relocatable power taps (RPTs) be used and what are the UL requirements? (first published April 11, 2016, last updated April 21, 2026) restates the same zones and the four NFPA conditions. For hospitals the requirement moved on January 1, 2026: EC.02.05.01 EPs 23 and 24 were deleted and folded into PE.04.01.01 EP 1, which simply requires compliance with NFPA 99-2012 and TIAs 12-2 through 12-6. The rule did not change; the address did.

The matrix surveyors actually carry

“Patient care vicinity” is defined in NFPA 99-2012 §3.3.139: the space within a location intended for examination and treatment of patients, extending 6 ft (1.8 m) beyond the normal location of the bed, chair, table, treadmill or other device that supports the patient, and vertically to 7 ft 6 in. (2.3 m) above the floor. It is the boundary that decides which row you are in.

What the real findings look like

Neither of these photographs shows a strip attached to a wall. Both show the findings that actually get written — and that the wall-mount argument tends to distract from.

Samektra field photos. Both scenes are playable in Field Call.

The other six things that get an RPT written up

Once the wall-mounting argument above is settled, round two starts, and this is where it gets fun, because everyone has a rule and almost nobody can tell you where it came from. You’ve probably been told — by someone standing over your shoulder with a clipboard, in the tone reserved for absolute certainty — that you can’t leave it flat on the desk, outlets up, because someone’s coffee is going to find those slots eventually. That you can’t leave it on the floor, that’s what extension cords are for (they are not). That you can’t screw it to the cart, that’s what zip ties are for (they are not that either). That you absolutely cannot plug it into another strip, don’t ask why, just don’t. That your six-outlet special from home stays home. That it cannot go anywhere near the sink where the night shift washes a travel mug at 3 a.m. Every one of those rules is delivered with total confidence, they don’t all sound the same twice, and — here is the actually interesting part — most of them are right. They’re just quoting a folk memory of a real rule instead of the rule itself. One at a time, then.

One real desk, three call-outs from the person who found them. See how many of the six you can name before reading the table below.

Sources for every row: NEC 110.3(B) and UL 1363 guide information (already cited above); University of Nebraska Medical Center EHS, Safety Guideline — Relocatable Power Taps or Strips; Tripp Lite, Power Strip Safety and Regulatory Compliance; University of Toledo Procedure ME-08-004; the Leviton PK-93031 instruction sheet already quoted above. Full citations in the reference list.

Row one, in the wild

This is what most desks actually have: outlets up, tucked under the monitor base, nothing between a spill and the slots.

The medical-grade version of the same product family. That cover only opens with a plug blade — the tool-access design the Tripp Lite / UNMC guidance above is describing.

Row two, in the wild

On the floor, outlets up, fed from a wall outlet that already carries a four-plug adapter — three of this section’s claims in one photo.

The bracket on the floor next to it used to hold something up. Whatever this strip is temporarily standing in for, it has been “temporary” long enough to grow its own tangle.

Field photos in this section: Samektra and Miller Brown, from real facility rounds; cropped where a document or ID in frame was not the point. The two Leviton product photographs are the manufacturer’s, credited in the reference list.

“But is it even an RPT?” — surge protectors, UPS units, and the box screwed to the wall

Three objects get argued about on the theory that they are a different thing and therefore exempt. Two of them are not a different thing. The third genuinely might be — and you cannot tell by looking at its face.

A surge protector is still an RPT

UL 1449 is the surge-component test, not a product category and not a permission. A surge strip is dual-listed: UL 1449 for the suppression circuit, UL 1363 for everything else about it. Every rule on this page — direct connection to a wall receptacle, temporary mount only, no daisy-chain, 75 percent, out of the patient care vicinity unless it is a 1363A / 60601-1 device attached to the cart — applies to it unchanged. “It’s a surge protector, not a power strip” is the single most common sentence a surveyor hears right before writing the finding anyway.

A UPS is not an RPT — which does not make it exempt

An uninterruptible power supply is listed to UL 1778, Uninterruptible Power Systems. It is not a UL 1363 product, so the RPT rules do not attach to it by name. Two things attach instead. First, its outlets are the outlets of a UL 1778 appliance, not permanently installed receptacles — so a power strip plugged into a UPS is a strip that is not plugged into a wall, and it gets written the same way as a daisy-chain. Second, inside the patient care vicinity the question becomes “is this medical electrical equipment?” CMS K-920 and the TJC FAQ name only UL 1363, 1363A and 60601-1; a desktop UPS is none of those. Medical-grade UPS units that carry a UL 60601-1 listing with hospital-grade outlets do exist, and those are the only kind that belong within six feet of the bed.

The battery is a separate chapter, and a short one for a unit this size. Most desktop UPS units still use sealed lead-acid; lithium-ion is arriving. Either way a typical 1,500 VA desktop unit stores a fraction of a kilowatt-hour, which is below the 1 kWh line where NEC Article 706 (energy storage systems) begins and far below the 20 kWh line where NFPA 855 starts regulating lithium-ion installations. What is left is ordinary appliance handling: keep it ventilated, off the floor, out of the wet zone, and replace it when the self-test complains. A rack-scale UPS or a battery-backup lineup is a different conversation entirely, and that one is an NFPA 855 conversation.

The box screwed to the wall: follow the supply, not the shape

The picture that arrives with the question. Two stacked outlet modules, a laptop brick clamped above, a coffee maker on the right. Notice what you cannot see: where the box gets its power. That is the whole question.

A gray metal outlet block mounted under a desk, two rows of receptacles, cords everywhere — the picture that gets sent with the question “is this an RPT?” The honest answer is that the face of the box does not tell you, and neither can a surveyor from across the room. What decides it is how the box gets its power, and there are exactly three possibilities:

• It is hard-wired into the building. Then it is a multioutlet assembly under NEC Article 380 (UL 111) or a receptacle strip in a surface raceway — fixed wiring, installed under permit, not a relocatable anything. The RPT rules do not apply. The general rules still do: it is a branch-circuit outlet, so the coffee maker plugged into it is judged by the circuit’s capacity, not by a 75 percent rule that was written for cords.
• It has a cord and plug and is fastened with tools to furniture. Then the question is which listing it carries. A furniture power distribution unit under UL 962A, or an office-furnishing power module under UL 1286, is designed and listed for exactly that: tool-secured to furniture, cord to a wall receptacle. Inside its listing. If the mark on it says UL 1363, it is an ordinary strip someone bolted to a panel, and that is the NEC 110.3(B) finding from the top of this article.
• It has a cord and plug and is fastened to the building. No listing covers that. UL 962A is for furniture; UL 111 is for hard-wired; UL 1363 forbids it. This is the case people mean when they say “attached to the structure,” and it is a finding under whichever standard the mark on the housing names.

The one that needs its own paragraph: can it go next to a sink?

Yes, keep it away — but this is the claim where naming the wrong reason is the whole problem, because a surveyor who reaches for “GFCI within 6 feet of a sink” may be citing a rule that does not even apply to the room you are standing in. Three separate things are actually at work:

• The strip’s own listing excludes the environment. UL 1363 / 1363A / 60601-1 devices are rated for a dry, non-condensing environment — the exact strip quoted throughout this article carries “5% to 95% relative humidity, non-condensing” on its own spec sheet and warns against liquid contact. A sink’s splash zone is outside that rated environment by definition, which makes proximity an NEC 110.3(B) listing issue — the same mechanism as the wall bracket at the top of this article, just triggered by moisture instead of screws.
• The GFCI-near-a-sink rule is real, but it governs the wall outlet, not the strip — and it often does not apply in a patient room at all. NEC 210.8(B) requires GFCI protection for a fixed receptacle within 6 ft of the outside edge of a sink in non-dwelling occupancies (added 2020; the paragraph number inside §210.8(B) has since moved as later editions added more sink and kitchen items ahead of it — confirm the number in your adopted edition rather than quoting one from memory). But Exception No. 2 to that rule exempts receptacles at patient bed locations in Category 1 (critical care) or Category 2 (general care) spaces, which instead follow NFPA 70 §517.21’s health-care-specific receptacle rules — precisely because a GFCI can nuisance-trip and de-energize equipment a patient depends on. So in most patient rooms, this particular NEC hook is not even in play; the listing point above is doing the real work.
• NFPA 99’s “wet procedure location” is a different rule for a different room. Operating rooms and procedure rooms where irrigation fluid can pool on the floor trigger isolated power or GFCI protection under a separate NFPA 99 provision. That concept does not extend to an ordinary break-room or exam-room sink, and citing it there is its own kind of misreading — the same pattern as the article’s central sentence, aimed at the wrong location.

This is the picture the rule is actually about: a cord living in the splash zone. Nobody needs a section number to know that’s the wrong spot — the point of this section is naming which document backs that instinct up.

Two editions at once: CMS on 2012, Georgia on 2024

Here is the mechanism behind the mismatched section numbers. Federal regulations may only incorporate a specific, named edition of a standard, so CMS is frozen on NFPA 99-2012 and NFPA 101-2012 until it completes a new rulemaking — and it has not. NFPA 99-2012 and NFPA 101-2012 both reference the 2011 NEC in their Chapter 2. That is why K-920 cites “400-8”: in 2011 that was the number.

Georgia moved. The State Fire Marshal’s Rule 120-3-3-.04 jumped NFPA 101 and NFPA 99 from the 2018 editions straight to the 2024 editions effective May 27, 2025 (Georgia was never on 2021), and the same rule adopts the NEC directly: the 2020 edition until December 27, 2025, the 2023 NEC since December 28, 2025, alongside the 2024 IFC. On the building-permit side, DCA’s State Minimum Standard Codes have run the 2023 NEC since January 1, 2025, with Georgia amendments effective January 1, 2026 that touch Articles 100, 210, 215, 225, 230 and 517 — nothing in Article 400. So in Georgia the cord rule is §400.12, and has been since the NEC renumbered it in 2017.

A Georgia hospital therefore answers to both texts, from two different enforcers, and on every point but one they say the same thing with different numbers. The one point of substance: NFPA 99’s 2018 revision retitled §10.2.3.6 Relocatable Power Taps and changed “permanently attached to the equipment assembly” to “securely attached,” adding the securement method to what must be verified and documented. The 2021 text reads simply “the RPT is securely attached.” For a CMS-certified facility the 2012 word governs the survey, and “permanently” — read with UL 1363A’s tool-removable requirement — is the stricter of the two. Meet it and you have met both.

Cite the edition every time. “NFPA 70 §400.8” with no year is a 2011-or-earlier citation; a plan reviewer working from the current book will look it up and find nothing there about cords. The NFPA 101 side of the same problem is covered in NFPA 101: 2012 vs 2024.

Georgia has its own power-tap text, and it agrees

Georgia did not leave RPTs to the NEC alone. Through the 2018-IFC era of Rule 120-3-3-.04, the State Fire Marshal replaced the fire code’s multiplug-adapter section with a Georgia-written one: relocatable power taps listed to UL 1363, polarized or grounded with overcurrent protection, directly connected to a permanently installed receptacle, never plugged into another RPT or an extension cord, cords not run through walls or doors, and strips mounted off the floor — with a specific clause letting hospital-grade RPTs listed on UL 1363A be used in patient care and patient sleeping rooms unless NFPA 70, 101 or 99 prohibits the particular use. Read that clause once more: the state fire code told hospitals to mount the strip off the floor. It never said anything about not attaching it.

With the 2024 IFC in force (December 28, 2025 in the fire-marshal rules, January 1, 2026 on the DCA side), the model code carries the equivalent text itself: IFC §603.5 requires current taps and relocatable power taps to comply with NFPA 70 and the fire code, §603.5.1 requires the UL 1363 listing, §603.5.1.1 requires UL 1363A or UL 60601-1 in Group I-2 and ambulatory care, §603.5.2 requires direct connection to a permanently installed receptacle, and §603.6 governs extension cords. Two cautions for anyone quoting the Georgia rule from a PDF: the consolidated copy on the OCI website is still the 2018-era text, and the December 2025 rule’s NEC addition points RPTs at “IFC 604.4.4”, which in the 2024 IFC is the elevator chapter — a cross-reference that did not get renumbered. Cite §603.5 and say which edition you mean.

One more Georgia-only line worth knowing: the DCH hospital licensure rule at 111-8-40-.34(c)(8) requires labor, delivery, birthing and nursery outlets to be provided without extension cords, cheater plugs or multiple-outlet adapters, “which are prohibited.” That is a state licensure requirement, independent of CMS and the fire marshal.

Who shows up in Georgia, and with which book

• CMS certification survey — Georgia’s state survey agency is the Department of Community Health, Healthcare Facility Regulation. The Life Safety Code portion for non-accredited hospitals, nursing homes, ASCs, hospices and ICFs is performed by the State Fire Marshal’s office under contract. Book: NFPA 99-2012 / NFPA 101-2012 / NEC 2011 numbering. Finding: K-920.
• Joint Commission deemed-status survey — the Life Safety Code surveyor. Same 2012 book; finding written to PE.04.01.01 EP 1 (hospitals, 2026 manual) and mapped to K-920 for CMS.
• Georgia State Fire Marshal (OCI) state inspection — the state’s own fire-safety inspection of a licensed healthcare occupancy. Book: NFPA 101-2024, NFPA 99-2024, the 2024 IFC and the 2023 NEC as adopted by Rule 120-3-3, whose notes require CMS-regulated facilities to meet CMS’s codes as well. Finding: NFPA 99-2024 §10.2.3.6, IFC §603.5, NEC §400.12 / §110.3(B).
• Local electrical inspector — on permitted work only. Book: the DCA-adopted 2023 NEC (§400.10 / §400.12 / §110.3(B)). Not a party to how you use a listed strip after the certificate of occupancy, unless the strip has become fixed wiring.

What a defensible RPT policy contains

The ASHE sample policy and the K-920 chart agree on the skeleton. A policy that has these elements will survive a survey; a policy that only says “no power strips” will be violated by Tuesday.

1. Definitions your staff can apply. Patient care vicinity (6 ft / 7 ft 6 in.), patient-care-related electrical equipment, RPT versus SPRPT, and the sentence “a surge protector is a power strip.”
2. The zone matrix from the table above, printed as a single page.
3. Listing by zone: UL 1363A or UL 60601-1 for anything serving PCREE; UL 1363 for everything else. Purchasing buys nothing without the mark.
4. Attachment by qualified staff only. Biomed or engineering attaches SPRPTs to equipment assemblies with tool-removable hardware, and records who did it. Nobody else mounts anything. Nurses and IT do not carry screwdrivers for this purpose.
5. Load rule: connected load at or below 75 percent of the supply cord’s ampacity. Worked example: a strip on a 20 A cord carries 15 A, which is 1,800 W at 120 V; a 15 A cord carries 11.25 A, about 1,350 W. A patient warmer and a phone charger is fine; a warmer, a compressor and a coffee maker is not, breaker or no breaker.
6. Inventory and verification. Every SPRPT tagged, added to the biomed inventory with its host equipment, and inspected when that equipment is inspected: listing mark present, housing and cord intact, plug blades tight, load within limit, still attached to the assembly it was assigned to.
7. The universal prohibitions, stated plainly: no daisy-chaining; no feeding a strip from an extension cord; no extension cord as permanent supply; no cord through a wall, door, window, ceiling or under a carpet; no cord stapled or clipped to the building; no three-to-two adapters anywhere; no strip on the floor where liquids and wheels are; no space heaters, microwaves, refrigerators or other high-draw appliances on any strip.
8. The IT exception, bounded. Workstations-on-wheels and imaging carts are equipment assemblies too. Where a temporary strip is unavoidable, it is listed correctly for its zone, logged as temporary with a resolution date, and the permanent fix is a work order for receptacles — because relocatable receptacles never count toward the room’s required count.

Writing it up — both directions

Two blocks. The first is the finding when the vicinity rule is actually broken. The second is the response a facility can send when it has been cited for a properly mounted strip under the wrong section.

The finding

The response

If you are not in healthcare

Strip out NFPA 99 and the same skeleton holds in an office, a school or a plant. OSHA 1910.303(b)(2) makes the UL listing enforceable; 1910.305(g)(1) repeats the NEC cord list, including “attached to building surfaces” — again with the cord as its subject; the 2002 OSHA interpretation letter confirms that a listed strip is fine when used as listed and that daisy-chaining and feeding it from an extension cord are not. The fire code adds the operational layer: the IFC and NFPA 1 both require power taps to be listed and plugged directly into a permanently installed receptacle, and both prohibit cords through doors, walls and ceilings. The test an inspector applies is the same one Article 400 was written around: is this cord doing a job that belongs to the building’s wiring? If a strip has been in one place, feeding the same fixed load, for two years, the honest answer is yes — and the fix is a receptacle, not a debate about the bracket.

The rounding checklist

Ask Clara

Clara has this article, the NFPA 99 decoded reader and the K-tag database. Try it on your own room.