Emergency code terminology used to notify staff in healthcare facilities about an event that requires immediate action varies greatly from one facility to another in Pennsylvania. Healthcare facilities are encouraged to standardize codes for increased patient safety, according to a Pennsylvania Patient Safety Advisory article.
One in three U.S. hospitals reported an increase in violence and assaults in 2014 despite widespread rising security budgets, according to a survey of 380 hospital administrators, chief security officers and staff by Guardian 8 Corporation.
How is healthcare industry security changing? The evolving demographics of the average emergency room population, in addition to an increased focus on workplace violence, are impacting the security department’s role within a hospital or healthcare system.
While security departmentsare more concerned with disruptions to patient care and C-level executives are focused on hospital administrations’ understanding of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regulations, but hospital security decision-makers are focused on patients’ and officers’ safety overall.
Safety and security is a number one priority at Seattle Children's Hospital and is recognized as being everybody’s responsibility. A safe culture is one that understands the hazards and risks that impact operations and encourages the reporting of potential and actual events.
Healthcare security is changing. As more and more hospitals form or join health systems or implement the Affordable Care Act, the standardization of security officer services has many advantages. The need for greater value from service providers, more efficient programs, consistent protocols for staff and patients and an increasing focus on both safety and security are positioning standardization of security services as a critical solution for health systems.
When the security team at Palmetto Health Baptist, an acute care Medical Center in Columbia, S.C., invested in an upgrade to their surveillance cameras from black-and-white to color, they did so with the expectation that it would significantly improve the quality of video they were capturing.
Rush University Medical Center in Chicago operates from a campus that spans four city blocks and 20 buildings, presenting some unique security challenges.
Approximately 11,370 healthcare and social assistance workers were the victims of workplace violence assaults in 2010 – a 13-percent increase over such assaults in 2009, and many more incidents likely go unreported, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.