What are some of the most important safety and security considerations for a hospital’s patients, visitors, and staff?
When it comes to protecting patients, focus on the following questions:
- Who is coming in and out of patient rooms?
- What is the access control plan for patient rooms?
- Who are authorized users?
- What different levels of access need to be controlled?
- What can be done to improve response time by nurses, technicians, and doctors to drive a higher level of medical safety?
- What increases the physical safety of patients?
- What kinds of possible pitfalls and problems exist when it comes to the safety risks to patients themselves?
- What improves admittance safety to hospital emergency rooms?
- When patients are in transit to a hospital by ambulance, with emergency medical technicians, how can patient vitals be relayed to ER departments while on the way to the hospital?
- What kinds of voice communications, by two-way radio, allow for coordination on the way to the hospital?
When it comes to protecting visitors, hospitals often consider visitor safety as an extended part of the visitor experience, where these kinds of questions arise:
- In a post-COVID-19 world, how will visitors’ temperatures be scanned?
- Is there a concierge team to direct visitors on how to get to the right places as quickly as possible?
- Who monitors where visitors are going?
- Are free golf cart rides being provided to shuttle visitors from the parking lot to the entrance? Can two-way radios improve this process?
- Is there call box technology in the parking lots that enable instantaneous voice communications with hospital security?
- Overall, what’s being done to improve the visitor experience so visitors come back when sick?
When it comes to protecting the safety and security of hospital staff and management, consider:
- What is the access control plan for staff and management?
- What goes into a lock-down during an emergency?
- Who is monitoring which hospital staff and management are in the hallways?
- Can AI-/analytics-driven incident management software be used to identify safety problems, such as persistent slip and fall accidents that are happening repeatedly in the same location?
- Can AI-/analytics-driven incident management software be used to identify security anomalies, such as an abandoned backpack?
- What can be done to rapidly identify and address violent patient behaviors?
- When there is an incident, how do you get the message out instantaneously using voice/mass communications technology?
What other important safety and security considerations would you add to this list? Share your thoughts in the section for comments below.
And if you’d like to learn how wireless communication improves physical security for hospitals, download our eBook, “Creating Safe and Secure Hospital Environments: How Wireless Communication Improves Physical Security for Hospitals (For Hospital Facilities and Security Professionals).”
