Hello all. I recently came across this topic, and I had a similar question regarding chimes. Their main application, it seems, is hospitals, many of which use voice evacuation. All of that considered, is there still a reason for companies to still make chimes and chime strobes?
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Small surgical centers might still use chimes for their fire alarm notification, since they are considered ambulatory health care facilities by the IBC and by CMS (the agency responsible for Medicaid, which requires compliance with a modified NFPA 101), and ambulatory health care facilities are required to have fire alarm systems regardless of their size.
Section 16.7.4.3.3 of NFPA 99 requires that the fire alarm signal readily identifies the location that staff must respond to. This could be accomplished using voice evac, annunciators at all nurse stations, or a coded fire alarm signal, and coded chimes are the cheapest option.
Another use of chimes is for buildings with manual voice evac. Since the speakers will only activate after the operator responds, some other signal is needed to notify the person operating the voice evac, and a chime would serve this purpose (if there is not an annunciator nearby). Chimes can similarly be used for presignal and positive alarm sequence systems.
Yet another use of chimes is inside restrooms. NFPA 72 allows the audibility requirement in restrooms to be reduced to the private mode level where permitted by the AHJ, so chimes can be used in situations where an audible device is needed inside the restroom but a horn would produce excessive sound pressure levels.
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Chime strobes are very useful for apartments and homes that must (either by law or resident necessity) accommodate the hearing-impaired, as a FWR-capable chime strobe + a bridge rectifier module (commonly available from electric lock vendors) can be used as a “drop in” replacement for a hardwired doorbell chime, and they can also be used with DC powered systems, such as what you’d see in conjunction with a doorphone/intercom monitor.
(It also helps that you can whack a green lens on a L-series chime strobe, to make it clearly distinct from some other strobe going off in the unit. Sadly, the Genesis chimestrobes don’t have swappable lens modules, and the Eluxa chimestrobes don’t come in colored versions either.)
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True. I’d assume this could also apply to places like memory care facilities.
In that case it could just be the voice evac speakers broadcasting a chime tone. (If I worded the original post poorly, I wasn’t referring to the chime tone potentially being obsolete, just standalone chime devices.)
All I’ll say to that is while it’s supposedly compliant, it’s certainly bizarre. 
A better solution would be a horn strobe directly outside of the bathroom.
I was referring to a single chime inside the operator’s room that does not notify the general public. I suppose that could still be accomplished using a speaker, though that may be more difficult on certain systems depending on how the main speakers are arranged.
If the restroom is large enough then a horn strobe on the outside might not be enough for public mode (and if it is, it would probably be much louder than necessary outside the restroom). I don’t know if I’ve ever actually seen a chime strobe in a restroom, but it is an option provided by NFPA 72.