Conducting Access Control Security Audits

Evaluating your hospital’s entrance security now will help to ensure you comply with Joint Commission standards and effectively respond to emergencies.

1. Lockdown Readiness. Whether for gang violence, infant/child abduction or big emergencies such as major fires, traffic accidents or scenarios such as earlier discussed, a hospital must be able to lockdown corridors, wings or the entire hospital quickly and efficiently.

A 2009 healthcare security survey conducted by Campus Safety magazine revealed that the average lockdown time of a hospital was 11 minutes. As to be expected, the larger the hospital, the longer the lockdown time. What was startling was that the survey concluded that 20% of hospitals had a lockdown time of over 15 minutes, while 7% of the hospitals who participated in the survey actually revealed that their facility could not lock down completely. For all the reasons listed earlier, this is not preferred.

2. Creating a Lockdown System. New construction or major remodeling lets hospitals use hardwired electronic locks so that they can be connected to the network for easy centralized management. When managed from a central location, lockdowns are fast and effective.

As an alternative to hardwired locks, a wireless electronic locking system, extremely popular in hospitals during retrofits, provides flexibility and simplicity of installation with the same enhanced security and lockdown capabilities of a hardwired system. Wireless access control system installation is fast and easy with minimal disruption to patient care areas and can easily be integrated with other electronic hardware for an integrated life safety and security solution.

One lockdown issue with some wireless technologies, such as WiFi, has been the potential for communications delay. Usually, with Wi-Fi, access control decisions are downloaded by the host into the lock five or six times per day. Access control decisions in this way are managed within the locks (as is the case with traditional offline locks) to minimize communication from the lock to the host and conserve batteries. However, such limited (offline) connectivity with the host limits the locks’ ability to receive urgent commands from the host.

There can even be problems with older 900 MHzwireless platforms. Oftentimes, a direction to immediately lock down could be ignored for 10 or more minutes. However, with newer modular wireless locks, a patent-pending wake-up-on-radio feature works in parallel with the 10-minute heartbeat. Without waking up the entire lock, it listens for complementary commands every one to 10 seconds and responds. Thus, 10 seconds is the longest it will take to initiate lockdown.

By emphasizing planning, practice, education and the latest in security hardware, lockdown times can be drastically reduced in even the largest of hospitals. A reduction  in lockdown time signifies an improvement in emergency preparedness. It also assures that perimeter access and intra-facility access has been optimized for both performance and security, resulting in increased security and safety for employees and patients.

3. Control Access to Better Facilitate Lockdowns. When there is an influx of patients or others, it is imperative to control where they have access. You must protect patient privacy, including their rooms and their records. To do so, you will probably have to increase the number of electronic access managed openings for better control.

Security professionals in healthcare applications can now choose the specific electronic lock they need with full confidence that it can be later upgraded without ever taking it off the door. New electronic locks provide options to truly customize the access control solution, quickly migrate to meet future needs and provide seamless integration with current software now and later with a lower cost of ownership.

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