Has Violence, Theft and COVID Changed the Way you Manage your Healthcare Facility Security?

We are very polite people.

When someone asks “hold the door,” it is our nature to be polite and do it.

Many facilities provide a key card or some form of authorization to gain access with the intent that staff will have admission to necessary areas, and visitors will need to be escorted. At Konica Minolta, we also use this type of system. However, we have a rule about not holding the door at entrances that require key cards. Unfortunately, the only way we know the rule wasn’t followed is when a security issue arises and we have to react to it.

UNAUTHORIZED VISITORS

In a healthcare environment, unauthorized visitors are a critical concern, not only because the facility is full of patients to monitor, but also because they need to make sure only authorized people are allowed into the facility.  Protection of people, data and assets is a continuous concern.

Whether the intruder is just trying to get in early or later than established visiting times or actually has theft or disruption in mind, secure access can often prevent potential problems.

So, let’s first look at what can happen.

If patients are the target

Skilled Nursing Facilities, Memory Care, Convalescent Care and Hospitals all are focused on patient/resident care. Unfortunately, violence in healthcare is all too common, and all visitors may not have the best intentions. An unauthorized visitor could do physical harm to staff and patients.

If records/data are the targets

Cyber security is a definite concern, and hackers from across the globe are operating 24/7 to breach your network and steal electronic protected health information (ePHI).  But letting a savvy hacker into your facility can also cause havoc: critical data loss, operational disruptions, legal liabilities and the expense to fix it.

If vandalism/reputation is the target

Yes, even in healthcare, there can be unsavory business practices. If your facility gets a reputation for lack of safety, placing patients/residents at risk, and unsecure premises - you could lose patients and watch your business decline.

If narcotics are the target

All healthcare facilities have a medication room which may contain controlled substances and represent a target for internal and external bad actors. Many existing solutions such as badge readers and keypads can easily be stolen, allowing easy access to narcotics. There needs to be a second-factor authentication for these rooms.

LABOR SHORTAGES

Exacerbating the need to be diligent about your facility’s access is a very busy staff, often overworked, and desperate for more people to cover the tasks that need to get done. Are people paying attention to the coming and going of the visitors?

ACCESS CONTROL

What's the answer? A system that allows a facility to manage the flow of people in, out, and through a facility, on a proactive basis, while at the same time monitoring their activities.

At Konica Minolta, FORXAI Secure Access is our solution for facility management to control the entry to their facilities. Read some of the benefits below.

• Through its identity recognition algorithm, people who belong (staff, patients and visitors) can easily enter.

• The ability to provide proactive, automated temperature screening of staff and visitors can mitigate potential health risks to patients.

• Automated mask detection can detect if a person is wearing a mask via a camera feed.

• Vaccine checks verify with the third-party vendor that the user is vaccinated according to client-defined requirements.

• A Virtual Receptionist Kiosk can reduce administrative tasks by verifying identities for authorized access, providing visitor check-in forms, COVID screening forms, wayfinding and badge printing.

Additionally, secure access can offer:

• Automated elopement detection to protect patients from leaving the building unescorted.

• Prevention of patients entering unauthorized areas that could be dangerous.

• Logging of all incoming and outgoing individuals to provide data for contact tracing and meeting compliance regulations.

• Analytics for insight into facility trends.

WHY IS ACCESS CONTROL IMPORTANT?

1. Security

2. Accountability

3. Reporting

In the big picture, video security and secure access are all about the safety of the patients, staff and visitors in the facility and the exterior areas. You can keep unauthorized people out and further prevent people from getting into areas that should be “off-limits” to certain staff, patients and visitors.  Secondarily, it is important to have the reputation of a very secure facility – it benefits your business and its reputation.

You not only have a system in place, but you have the intelligence to go along with it. Your system log keeps track of visitors, staff and patients and which areas of your facility a particular person has accessed. You are accountable for your facility – and you have the information to prove it – so meeting compliance regulations doesn’t have to be a daunting task.

Finally, you have data through system reporting. It documents the destruction of assets, tracks theft and breaches, and reports on trends. A system is only as powerful as how well it does its job and how well you can document it.

FORXAI, the Konica Minolta imaging IoT platform, combines imaging technology with cutting-edge IoT and AI technologies to accelerate the digital transformation of society with customers and partners. Within its portfolio is FORXAI Video Security Solution for Secure Access. Learn more here.