What 5 Major Threats to Hospital Security?

The treatment of patients is far from the only issue that hospitals face nowadays. Hospitals must now take extra steps to anticipate and prepare for hospital security threats in order to maintain the safety of patients, visitors, and employees. View more detail!

Hospitals are subject to crime and violence committed by patients, visitors, and even hospital employees. As a result, security systems must incorporate proactive steps to develop and enforce effective security policies that emphasize accountability, readiness, and response.

Understanding the dangers is the first step in developing an effective security system.

Here are some of today’s most pressing hospital security concerns:

Abuse Of Medical Personnel

The most common types of abuse-related injuries in healthcare facilities include the assault of medical personnel. Patients striking, kicking, beating, or shoving medical professionals were responsible for 80% of major violent incidents documented in hospital permissions. There are numerous factors that play a role in this. For example, patients may be the victims of a quarrel that results in a hostile or violent environment within the hospital. Patients may experience instabilities as a result of addiction or mental health concerns in other circumstances.

Psychiatric aides are more than ten times more at risk of patient-inflicted violence than nursing assistants, who are the second most impacted group. Emergency rooms, geriatrics, pediatrics, and behavioral health practitioners are among the other high-risk groups.

Active Assailant Attacks

Between 2000 and 2015, researchers found 241 hospital shootings. The majority of in-hospital shootings occurred in the emergency room (29 percent), in the parking lot (23 percent), and in patient rooms, according to the data (19 percent ). The training of security guards include quick response to emergencies.

Infant Abductions

The most common form of abduction in healthcare settings is that of an infant. Between 1965 and 2017, 317 cases of infant abduction were reported. The majority of occurrences of newborn abduction occur in the mother’s hospital room, with only 8% of cases involving violence against the mother. Many of the attackers pretended to be medical workers in order to grab a child from the mother’s hands before more effective security systems were developed.

As a result, hospitals have tightened security and patient education programs that directly target this type of threat. The system doesn’t need to be complex, but it must be effective. Access to maternity wards, for example, should be restricted to qualified professionals or those who can show their relationship to a patient. It can also include badges that indicate medical personnel’s security clearance.

Supplies And Property Theft

You could create an A-Z list of items stolen from healthcare facilities, including drugs, food, and medical supplies. Hospitals reported 272 theft incidents in 2009. This number had risen to 2,926 by 2015, a 166 percent increase. It’s possible that the end outcome will be incredibly costly. Theft from hospitals is a sign of a weak security system, and it also adds to unneeded administrative costs.

Pressure To Cut Costs

While 49% of hospitals reported a rise in crime from 2016 to 2017. And nearly one-quarter of hospitals (23%) reported a drop in their hospital security budget during the same time period. One reason for this is a reluctance to hire more security personnel. The main difficulty for hospitals, according to hospital workers, is high-security threat occurrences, no increase in staff.

Security requirements are evolving, and hospitals must adapt to ensure the safety of their patients and employees. To combat the rising danger of in-hospital crime, hospitals must place equal emphasis on crime prediction and prevention as well as incident response and management. More modern technology and data collecting, improved security visibility to deter thieves, and increasing in-house security presence and security response are some solutions.