Legionella Water Management Plan — ASHRAE 188-2021 Compliant
Required by CMS of certified hospitals, critical access hospitals and long-term care facilities. Strongly recommended for hotels, large commercial buildings, and cooling tower operators. Built to ASHRAE Standard 188-2021 with the WMP team, building survey, flow diagrams, control measures, and monitoring procedures.
When this template is required
Expected by CMS memorandum QSO-17-30 (2017) of CMS-certified hospitals, critical access hospitals and long-term care facilities, and enforced through the infection prevention and control Conditions of Participation. Strongly recommended (and increasingly required by state health departments and insurance carriers) for hotels, large commercial buildings, cooling tower operators, and large building owners.
Why this template
$3.97 CPC at KD 12
Premium healthcare/facilities audience pays premium prices for compliance content. Easy to rank organically — most competitor templates are consultant-developed and not available for self-purchase.
CMS-compliant for healthcare
CMS QSO-17-30 (2017) requires CMS-certified hospitals, critical access hospitals and long-term care facilities to have a Legionella water management program. The template includes the CMS compliance crosswalk specifically for healthcare buyers.
ASHRAE 188-2021 (current)
ASHRAE 188-2021 is the current edition, superseding 2018. ASHRAE describes the revision as replacing permissive language with enforceable language so the standard can be adopted in codes and regulations, and Addendum e (approved 30 September 2021) added a normative appendix setting laboratory accreditation requirements where a team chooses to test for Legionella. The template is built to the 2021 edition.
WMP team and building survey worksheets
ASHRAE 188 requires a designated Program Team — which it permits to be a group or a single individual — and a survey of the building and its water systems. Both are pre-formatted, using the multidisciplinary team composition CDC recommends.
What you receive
- Legionella Water Management Plan (Word .docx) — ASHRAE 188 structure
- WMP team designation form
- Building water system survey worksheet
- Water system flow diagram worksheet — the facility draws the diagram from the completed table
- Control measure selection matrix (temperature, biocide, flushing)
- Monitoring procedure (control limits, frequency, action thresholds)
- Corrective action procedure for out-of-control situations
- Documentation and verification procedure
- CMS QSO-17-30 compliance crosswalk (for healthcare)
How you get it
This document is written and reviewed against the standard it cites, and it is ready now. The download link is emailed as soon as your payment clears.
Revisions included — if something about your operation changes what the document should say, reply to the delivery email and we will amend it.
Who buys this
- Healthcare facilities certified by CMS (hospitals, long-term care)
- Hotels (state and local health department requirements increasingly common)
- Large commercial buildings with cooling towers
- Multi-unit residential buildings
- Facilities with high-risk populations (senior living, dialysis centers)
Frequently asked
Is a Legionella Water Management Plan mandatory?
It depends on the facility type. Healthcare: yes in practice for CMS-certified hospitals, critical access hospitals and long-term care facilities, which CMS expects to have one under memo QSO-17-30 (2017). Hotels: increasingly required by state and local health departments. Commercial buildings with cooling towers: required by some local jurisdictions (NYC, others). Elsewhere ASHRAE 188 is a voluntary consensus standard and no general federal rule makes a plan mandatory on its own — but Legionella is a recognized hazard, so where a case or outbreak is linked to a building the health department directs the response and OSHA can act under the General Duty Clause. Strongly recommended in all cases — the cost of an outbreak (litigation, brand damage, regulatory action) is many times the cost of a WMP.
What is ASHRAE 188?
ASHRAE Standard 188 — 'Legionellosis: Risk Management for Building Water Systems' — is the consensus standard for managing Legionella risk in building water systems. The 2021 edition is the current version. The standard defines the Water Management Plan (WMP) approach: team, survey, flow diagrams, control measures, monitoring, corrective action, documentation. The template follows the ASHRAE 188 structure exactly.
What's CMS QSO-17-30?
A 2017 CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) memorandum addressed to CMS-certified hospitals, critical access hospitals and long-term care facilities. It expects them to have water management policies and procedures that reduce the risk of Legionella growth and spread, and state survey agencies review them; CMS enforces the expectation through the infection prevention and control Conditions of Participation, so a finding can affect certification and with it Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement. The memo does not apply to ambulatory surgical centers. The template includes the CMS compliance crosswalk.
Who needs to be on the WMP team?
ASHRAE 188 requires the building owner or their designee to designate a Program Team, which the standard defines as the group or individual responsible for developing, implementing and maintaining the program. It does not mandate a composition or name any required discipline. The multidisciplinary make-up this template is built around — facilities, the people who actually operate the water systems, the water treatment provider, maintenance and, in healthcare, infection prevention — follows CDC toolkit practice. The template includes the team designation form and role definitions.
What are 'control measures' in a WMP?
ASHRAE 188 requires a control measure wherever the analysis identifies a hazardous condition, applied at a defined control location, and requires the Program Team to set and justify a control limit for it. The standard's own definition of a control limit is a maximum value, a minimum value or a range of values of a chemical or physical parameter — it does not supply the numbers. Typical measures are temperature control, disinfectant residual, biocide for cooling towers, and flushing of low-use outlets. The figures commonly cited by CDC and in ASHRAE Guideline 12 (for example, Legionella grows best between 77°F and 113°F) are set out in the template's guidance appendix as starting points for your team's decision, not as requirements of the standard. The template includes the control measure selection matrix and the control limit register.