Security Benefits Every Healthcare Provider Should Know

For any hospital, doctor’s office, outpa­tient clinic, or similar, security is a top priority. Not only do hospitals house patients, expensive equipment, and medica­tions, but they are also home to medical records and confi­dential documents. Especially as we emerge from the pandemic, it is essential to keep both property, people, and data protected. Integrated security systems can help strengthen your security posture. Here are some of the benefits of integrated security systems for hospitals and healthcare providers to help keep them safe and secure, especially during the pandemic and its aftermath.

Optimized Access Control

Access control is not new to the vast majority of hospitals in some forms. Yet often these access control systems aren’t customized to your exact security goals or are simply outdated. As rooms shift around and restricted areas such as medical rooms, medication rooms, or surgery floors are added to the building, your access control system needs to accom­modate them. Your access control system needs to be integrated with alarms and cameras so you are immedi­ately notified when an unautho­rized person attempts to gain access to these areas. Cameras can also be programmed to follow people who enter restricted areas, even if they are autho­rized, to ensure maximum protection and ideal monitoring for security and liability.

Professional Monitoring

Profes­sional monitoring adds another layer of protection to your security system. While you can monitor your own property from your location during business hours, profes­sional monitoring allows you to have a fresh set of eyes when an alarm is triggered at any time, day or night. You can see every­thing at once, including multiple floors, buildings, and even your parking areas. If an issue occurs, your security team will be able to spot it quickly and react immedi­ately, minimizing any damage. This monitoring capability also makes it easier to find a suspi­cious person in case of an emergency or threat.

Monitored Alarms

Hospitals often have unique needs for alarms such as alerting staff and visitors to different issues like someone poten­tially going missing, a fire, or unautho­rized access into restricted areas. Alarms are important in hospitals to alert staff and visitors to a variety of different issues or concerns. In these events, an alarm or notifi­cation of some sort will typically sound. When paired with an access control system, this alarm can immedi­ately seal all entrances and exits, elevators, or doorways or just seal specific areas. The cameras can also help make sure the specific area or the entire property is monitored to find the threat quickly and address it.

Data Collection

When you integrate your system, it becomes centralized, which will make is much easier to collect and retain the data which further improves your security measures. When you collect this data, it will be much easier to adjust the system based on any new weak points or holes in the security officer rotation, check-in desks, waiting areas, Etc. While a consultant will help you establish these weak areas when planning for the instal­lation, it’s wise to keep collecting data and an integrated system will make it easy for you gather data that will help you identify problems that you can then address.

Cost Reduction

Keeping your system up to date is the easiest way to reduce future costs and upgrades and to main compliance with healthcare regula­tions. When your system is up to date, parts for the system will be easier to find and thus, cheaper. You’ll be able to do unified upgrades to easily improve your whole system instead of doing upgrades little by little. These unified updates will save time and money, and your system will need less people to monitor it because it’s all in one workspace.