Medical, dental and laboratory connections are the highest-consequence category in cross-connection control, and they are regulated accordingly.
Dental chairs, aspirators, autoclaves, sterilizers, lab sinks, analyzers and dialysis equipment all connect to the building supply, and what sits on the other side of those connections runs from chemical to biological. Much of the equipment is pumped, so backpressure is normal rather than exceptional. There is no category where the consequence of getting it wrong is higher.
How these buildings are protected
Almost always twice. A reduced pressure assembly at the service line contains the building and protects the public main. Then individual assemblies protect the potable water inside the building from each piece of equipment, because containment at the street does nothing for the drinking fountain down the hall.
That produces a long inventory. A single dental practice can have a dozen protected connections, and a clinic considerably more. Every one of them is on the same annual cycle, and every one of them has to appear on a report the provider receives directly.
What we do
We test them — all of them, in one scheduled block, worked around patients rather than through them — repair what fails, and file the reports with your provider.
The part that is worth more than the test is the record. We keep what is installed on your property: type, make, model, serial number, size and location, connection by connection. When an assembly fails, Colorado gives you sixty days to repair or replace it and retest before the provider is required to act, and that sixty days is a much shorter conversation when somebody already knows exactly what the assembly is and what it can be replaced with.
For a facility with more than a handful of connections, that inventory is the difference between an annual appointment and an annual scramble.
Scope on this one: we test and repair. Assemblies inside the building are not ours to replace — that is licensed plumbing work — but a failure is far more often a rebuild than a replacement, and rebuilds we do on the spot. The device types, and where our work stops.