or utilizing electrical life support equipment, and buildings that provide the required essential utilities or services for the operation of critical care areas or electrical life support equipment.

(B) Feeders. Where ground-fault protection is provided for operation of the service disconnecting means or feeder disconnecting means as specified by

230.95 or 215.10, an additional step of ground-fault protection shall be provided in all next level feeder disconnecting means downstream toward the load. Such protection shall consist of overcur-rent devices and current transformers or other equivalent protective equipment that shall cause the feeder disconnecting means to open.
The additional levels of ground-fault protection
shall not be installed as follows:

(1) On the load side of an essential electrical system transfer switch

(2) Between the on-site generating unit(s) described in 517.35(B) and the essential electrical system transfer switch(es)

(3) On electrical systems that are not solidly grounded wye systems with greater than 150 volts to ground but not exceeding 600 volts phase-to-phase

(C) Selectivity. Ground-fault protection for operation of the service and feeder disconnecting means shall be fully selective such that the feeder device, but not the service device, shall open on ground faults on the load side of the feeder device. A six-cycle minimum separation between the service and feeder ground-fault tripping bands shall be pro- vided. Operating time of the disconnecting devices shall be considered in selecting the time spread between these two bands to achieve 100 percent selectivity.

FPN: See 230.95, fine print note, for transfer of alternate source where ground-fault protection is applied.

(D) Testing. When equipment ground-fault protection is first installed, each level shall be performance tested toensure compliance with

517.17(C).

517.18 General Care Areas.

(A) Patient Bed Location. Each patient bed location shall be supplied by at least two branch circuits, one from the emergency system and one from the normal system. All branch circuits from the normal system shall originate in the same panelboard.

Exception No. 1: Branch circuits serving only special- purpose outlets or receptacles, such as portable X-ray outlets, shall not be required to be served from the same distribution panel or panels.

Exception No. 2: Requirements of 517.18(A) shall not apply to patient bed locations in clinics, medical and dental offices, and outpatient facilities; psychiatric, substance abuse, and rehabilitation hospitals; sleeping rooms of nursing homes and limited care facilities meeting the requirements of 517.10(B)(2).

Exception No. 3: A general care patient bed location served from two separate transfer switches on the emergency system shall not be required to have circuits from the normal system.

(B) Patient Bed Location Receptacles. Each patient bed

location shall be provided with a minimum of four recep
tacles. They shall be permitted to be of the single or duplex types or a combination of both. All receptacles, whether four or more, shall be listed "hospital grade" and so identified. The grounding terminal of each receptacle shall be connected to an insulated copper equipment grounding conductor sized in accordance with Table 250.122.

Exception No. 1: The requirements of 517.18(B) shall not apply to psychiatric, substance abuse, and rehabilitation hospitals meeting