Hotel-like card keys restrict access to high-risk units
Hotel-like card keys restrict access to high-risk units
Hospitals are taking a closer look at visitor access, especially in units such as obstetrics where visitors should be monitored closely, and one hospital is finding success with a key card similar to those used in hotels.
Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus uses a visitor management system that provides authorized guests of patients a hotel-type key card that permits them uninterrupted access to the patient’s room, explains Director of Security Dan Yaross. The system is integrated with the door access control system.
Yaross describes how the system works:
• Guests must provide a code (given to the patient when admitted) for the patient they would like to visit.
• Each guest provides identification at the welcome desk.
• The guest’s identification is checked in a database to ensure that any potentially unsafe or unauthorized visitor is properly managed.
• If authorization is granted, a hotel-type visitor key card is issued to provide access to the patient’s clinical unit.
• The card key is time-limited. Guest passes will be valid for one day and expire at the conclusion of already established visiting hours, which is 9:30 p.m. Parent passes will be valid for seven days and can be extended longer if necessary.
• Authorized guests also are issued badges with their photos that must be worn above the waist at all times.
Providing specific access only to the patient’s unit increases the security of the patient from abduction and reinforces visitor restrictions, Yaross says. It also helps prevent elopements, since the critical doors will not open without a staff or visitor key card.
Implementing the system, however, required changing the culture of the hospital, in which staff and visitors were accustomed to open doors throughout the facility. Staff members were educated about the need for better visitor management, and the purpose of the system is explained to visitors when they register, Yaross says.
“The key cards are very limited in their authorization. We only put on the card access to the doors, and it’s usually just one door that they need to get through to visit that patient,” he explains. “Getting a key card doesn’t mean you have access to all the locked unit doors.”
On a related note, Nationwide Children’s Hospital also recently has installed a magnetometer, commonly known as a metal detector, at the entrance to the emergency department (ED). Anyone entering the ED has to walk through the metal detector.
In the first two months of operation, the use of the magnetometer has prevented the entry of 596 knives, 59 box cutters, 134 cans of mace or pepper spray, and two guns. Some were detected by the magnetometer, and some were handed over when people realized the metal detector was in use. The items are held by the hospital and returned to visitors when they leave.
Hospitals are taking a closer look at visitor access, especially in units such as obstetrics where visitors should be monitored closely, and one hospital is finding success with a key card similar to those used in hotels.Subscribe Now for Access
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