Hospital Access Control: A Key to Enhanced Security

It is 2019 and even hospitals in the most affluent and upscale of neighborhoods need to realistically evaluate the state of their facility’s access controland visitor management. Each organization decides what level of risk they are willing to tolerate; however, having no controls in place to manage access, nor a tested visitor management system, is operating in a space of complete risk acceptance. If you cannot effectively identify who is coming into your facility, you simply cannot control the associated risks.

Consult with any healthcare security professional and they will likely share that there should only be three generally accepted populations in the hospital: staff (including physicians, contractors, vendors, students, etc…), patients, and visitors. Your hospital will be exponentially more secure if you are able to validate that everyone within the facility falls into one of these categories.[1]

Scenario:A hospital in the mid-west often allows people to loiter in their E/D lobby in order to take advantage of the heating on cold nights. One of their “regulars” later turns out to be a suspect in the brutal robbery of a staff member. Although this exception to the-staff, patient, or visitor rule-seems like a kind charitable gesture, it allows for a certain percentage of the hospital population to remain unidentified, unscreened, and on many occasions, unchallenged.  

•    An effective visitor managementsystem would have clarified that the suspect was not an employee, a patient, nor visiting a patient, and subsequently, should not have been permitted access, and not allowed to remain on the property

Although a healthcare system is a staple of any community, its primary focus is the delivery of healthcare. As hospitals continue to be the main venue of workplace violence, they must adjust to delivering healthcare in a much safer and more secure environment. Citizens once walked casually through rather open access airports; however, in a post-911 world, most of society has grown used to the enhanced, yet often inconvenient, security measures. Encountering similarly-styled screening measures in place at a hospital entranceway, would not be alarming and should not impact an individual’s decision making process regarding what hospital to visit in their time of need. In fact, the more obvious a hospital’s security countermeasures are, the more comfortable and secure many will feel. 

A visitor managementsystem is only as effective as the access controlmeasures it is coupled with. Simplified, implementing an effective program in a healthcare setting involves basic steps:

1.    Identify which entrances will be for public access, employee access, or in the case of facilities with an unusually large amount of entrances (as often seen in older construction), which will be closed

2.    Implement a technology solution at employee only entrances which control access by either a proximity device (card reader) or other method of validating identity and granting access

3.    Implement a technology solution at public entrances that both rapidly grants access to staff, while allowing for efficient screening of patients and visitors. 

The technology available for both access controland visitor managementin the hospital setting continues to evolve and improve. Improvement is usually thought of in terms of efficiency; that is, how fast can customers move through the process, and effectiveness; accuracy of the screening measures. 

The importance and the long term effectiveness of these two symbiotic processes cannot be overstated. Implementation of these measures - where they currently do not exist, can markedly reduce rates of trespass and their accompanying criminal activity.

Michael S. D’Angelo, CPP, CSC, CHPA is a Board Certified and Independent Security Consultant based in South Florida. His Firm’s professional services include: Security Risk Assessments, Forensic Consulting, and Workplace Violence/Active Shooter Education & Mitigation-with a specialty in the healthcare setting. He can be reached at: 786-444-1109 or www.securedirection.net

[1]The author recognizes that vendors can comprise a 4th category of authorized populations if the facility decides to screen them separately through a stand-along vendor management system