Visitor Management Hospital Facilities Managers’ Questions Answered
Maureen Bott, Product & Development Manager at Kalamazoo Security Print, answers Key Visitor Management Questions from Facilities Managers in the Health Sector.
1. What is a Visitor Management System and how is it different from an access control system?
A Visitor Management System (VMS) is a sophisticated solution which monitors who is in your building, why they are there, the time they spend and who should be supervising them. An access control system simply restricts entry to certain areas of a building without authorisation – usually through the use of a swipe card. Visitor Management Systems enable you to manage guests, agency staff and contractors, as well as hold vital information about their purpose in the building. It also helps you to meet Health & Safety requirements such as your duty of care to visitors.
Current nurse shortages across the UK means that in some cases, up to 14.3 patients are allocated to one nurse¹, so many hospitals rely heavily on agency staff to cope with busy periods. With a continual changeover of staff, it is important that the hospital keeps a record of who is on the premises, how long for and for what purpose.
A VMS can help to prevent unauthorised access to your building through the use of advanced hand written-pass systems with added specialist printing techniques such as CopyVoid™. This is used on the passes to show evidence of photocopying, so that each time a pass is copied, the word ‘void’ appears, rendering it useless. The amount of time a visitor can spend on your premises can also be controlled with a VMS. Time-dependent ink is a further security feature, which after a set period (typically 24 hours) will appear with the word ‘expired’, ensuring each pass has a clearly defined lifespan. This ensures that visitors can not re-enter your building when unauthorised. This is particularly useful to prevent agency staff, contractors and visitors to sensitive areas re-entering your hospital as employees, when unauthorised or after their contract has expired.
2. How does a Visitor Management System cover duty of care?
A VMS can be designed to include your individual health & safety and security policy such as your fire evacuation procedure. By adding these details to your VMS, you can ensure that your guests, temporary staff and contractors have read them and signed their acknowledgement, therefore meeting the duty of care. This information can also be printed onto the passes with a map detailing all the exits, handed to each person ensuring that they have this to hand at all times.
Duty of care to your patients and permanent staff is also complimented by the installation of a VMS. It clearly demonstrates that you care for your patients’ and employees’ safety and understand the importance of knowing who is wandering around your building, where they are and who they are with.
The NHS could modify their working practices and follow the example of the private health sector, where VMS are widely used giving greater protection for their employees and the people in their care.
3. How does a Visitor Management System help in the event of an evacuation?
In the event of an evacuation, a VMS provides you with a detailed list of all guests, temporary staff and contractors on your premises and the person responsible for them. This could be in the form of a manual book or a printable report from a PC solution such as VisitorNet or an online-based system such as iVisitor. As all people logged into the system are required to log out when they leave, the list provides definite confirmation that they are no longer in the building. When evacuating a building, a VMS can also provide visitors with a map of the emergency exits for their reference should they be parted from their host.
4. How can a Visitor Management System help to prevent the theft of expensive medical equipment and medicines from hospitals?
The last 12 months (April 2005-06) has seen 11 NHS trusts reporting thefts of diagnostic equipment worth more than £10,000 in the West Midlands alone². Despite many areas of a hospital allowing the free flow of visitors, there are certain areas that require stricter monitoring. With correctly trained staff, agreed procedures and a fit-for-purpose VMS, these vulnerable areas can be protected from unauthorised personnel, visitors and contractors. Should an incident occur, the information collected within the VMS, will allow investigators to know who was in that location, the purpose of their visit and the time they left the area. The presence of a VMS, procedures of booking visitors in and the collection of this information will alone reduce theft.
5. Why should I choose Kalamazoo Security Print to provide my Visitor Management System?
Kalamazoo Security Print is the market leader in the field of VMS and has been producing VMS for over 50 years. Based on feedback from cliebnts, Kalamazoo’s products are continually improved and updated. Kalamazoo prides itself on working with its customers to produce top quality VMS which are tailored to their requirements, whether their hospital is contained on a single-site or across a number of different locations.
¹ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6077690.stm
² http://www.medilinkwm.co.uk/news/display.php?id=238
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