6 Areas to Address to Access Health-Care Business
Hospitals have critical challenges that can be solved via access control. Meet this market’s needs by keeping facilities safe while also boosting the value provalue proposition by enhancing convenience and efficiencies.
By providing medical facility managers with tools to making their centers more secure in a more convenient manner, security systems integrators can increase their sales to health-care organizations.
4. Protecting Sensitive Locations
In many areas of a health-care facility, there are needs for higher security procedures and solutions. These are prime areas where reports emanating from the access control system on who has entered where and when can be invaluable. The addition of video is oftentimes helpful.
Research laboratories, biohazard areas, pharmaceutical dispensaries, datacenters and record offices typically have a limited number of users but require a very high level of security to protect private, dangerous or expensive materials, goods or information. For these areas, smart cards utilize encrypted technology to offer the highest in credential security. A multitechnology reader with keypad lets organizations implement multifactor authentication to provide increased security by requiring both a card and PIN to enter.
Biometric technologies, such as hand geometry readers, deliver the highest level of security because there are no credentials to lose, have stolen or be duplicated. Only biometrics verifies that the right person is entering an opening at the right time. And hand geometry is seen as less intrusive than other solutions such as fingerprint. Such security works for both perimeter and interior openings. When placed at a health-care center’s entrance, biometrics manages access of patients, visitors and staff.
Of special interest to medical organizations, both the computers that provide access to patient records as well as the rooms that store their paper counterparts must be secure. To meet HIPAA requirements, both physical and logical security are needed. Both are more easily attained when authorized individuals use the same smart card.
5. Cross-Corridor Challenges
It is well known that doctors and other hospital personnel need easy movement throughout the facility and don’t like to open doors or wait for them to open when they’re in a hurry. Doors that don’t open as needed can sustain repeated damage from carts and other equipment banging into them. A smart solution is to automate the hospital’s cross-corridor openings, which will also reduce noise.
Cross-corridor openings are found in many areas of a hospital and are subject to more use and abuse than most other openings in the facility. These can be very complicated openings – especially when the doors open opposite each other and have different security needs on each side. Although a cross-corridor opening’s main purpose is to control the spread of fire and/or smoke and create a horizontal evacuation plan to keep patients and staff safe in the event of an emergency, they also serve as department separators and as a way to create a separation point in an emergency situation.
To reduce damage from high levels of traffic and resist damage caused by wheelchairs, gurneys and other equipment, the use of a recessed exit device with concealed vertical rods, swing clear hinges and hollow metal doors keeps openings clear of items going through them. The recessed exit device maintains a low profile and has sloped end caps that deflect objects away from the door.
Frequent opening of doors by patients and staff is inefficient and disruptive. Hold-open magnets keep cross-corridor doors open for easy passage but release them in case of fire or other emergency. Automatic operators and touchless actuators let doors be opened with a wave of the hand. The doors will open at the correct rate of speed, allowing free and easy passage without waiting.
To automate them with enough time for easy flow of traffic, locate a push or touchless actuator or access control reader farther than from the door opening. Creating a longer distance between the actuator and the door lets the user trigger the actuator sooner, resulting in a door being open by the time the user gets to it, minimizing damage and noise from pushing. To make this transition, there are wireless actuator options that communicate directly to the auto-operators and make installation simpler.
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