Healthcare Security The one thing I could add to the discussion is that a few years ago,
as we continued to build new ramps and new parking lots, we raised the question ourselves about the need to have some consistency among our parking because that is potentially a liability risk if we have some parking ramps that have certain security devices and others don’t. So we developed our own standard from Mayo Clinic facilities and we made sure that there was a lot of consistency in all of our parking facilities. What we found in that process and benchmarking lots of other people is we could not find a good universally accepted standard for parking lot security, and so we developed one ourselves that we’re happy with.
Laura Stepanek: Can any of the integrators tell us about solu- tions that they have provided for parking areas? Ed Pederson: IP cameras obviously are becoming more prevalent in the industry, but what the IP cameras will allow us to do is see more area with fewer cameras and even get a better quality picture, especial- ly with megapixel and high-defi- nition cameras. In some respects you can get rid of pan-tilt-zoom cameras that sometimes you miss or even bad guys like to watch the PTZ and do things when the camera is looking the other way. With IP cameras, in some respects, you can see 180 degrees without the camera ever moving and the quality of the pictures is phenomenal. Being able to zoom in and see exactly who it is, what
Ed Pederson vice president of custom solu- tions for Stanley Convergent Security Solutions Inc.
color shirt they were wearing – it’s incredible. Analytics are using computer software to help create virtual barri-
ers. Sometimes, you don’t want to create Fort Knox for your parking garage, but you want to be able to see certain areas where there might be a lot of thefts. You can draw a virtual box around that area and, like somebody said earlier, the guards can’t be watching every camera all the time but the analytic software can. If somebody goes in that “box” it can issue an alert and tell the guard. That gets back into that whole physical security information management system I was talk- ing about earlier, where you have workflow communications; so the computer tells them there’s an alarm and then literally gives them a step-by-step on what to do if an alarm occurs in that area. It helps take the guessing game out of what a guard is supposed to do. That’s the exciting thing about where technology is helping. Bob Fecteau: Parking always seems to be an issue. There’s never enough of it and it seems a couple of times a year a lot of our health- care clients will ask us, ‘Hey, we’ve just taken over this property and we’re going to make it a parking lot. What can we do?’ They always seem to lack infrastructure down there, so a lot of times we’re asked to put in IT solutions. In the advent of the IT solutions we can put up not only IP cameras but also the emergency call boxes. What seems to be coming on the scene more is license plate
recognition (LPR), and it’s making its way into mainstay security. We’re seeing one manufacturer out there now that’s able to actually use a LPR camera as the access credential to let you into the parking garage. The technology isn’t necessarily there yet, but it’s coming.
Laura Stepanek: Of course, everybody wants more time and more money, so beyond those what is on your wish list in terms of solutions? Jim McNeil: I’m sometimes accused of sounding like a recruiting poster for Mayo Clinic, but I’m in a very enviable position of not
8 November 2010 • Solutions By Sector • Healthcare Security
having a long wish list. I work for an organization that really values security. We spend a lot of money on it here, although it’s not visible because we do want to emphasize our open, welcoming environ- ment. But we spend a lot of money on technology and I can honestly say I’ve never gone to the leadership of the organization with a legiti- mate security need and been turned down. I know that I’m in the minority and I’m very grateful for that, but it’s one of the great things about living here in the cornfields. John Williams: One of the things I’d like to see is more govern- ment grants designed to provide free training for private security forces. We see a lot of it coming out for law enforcement (sworn officers), but unless you can work it out with the local authority so you can send some folks to that, there really isn't any free training for the private sector of our security forces. We’re pretty lucky here too; we have an administration that does
support security. I may look at it a little bit differently although I appreciate the job I have and the need for somebody in my position and the people that work for me. It really is a shame that healthcare has to spend so many dollars to provide security protection that could have been spent on improving patient care. It would be nice to see more of the technology moving towards
WiFi and wireless integration along with video – radio communica- tion, access control and I know some of them are now and the ability actually of that to piggyback on our current in-house WiFi system rather than installing something completely brand new those would be – that would be my wish list. Michael Parks: I, too, believe that I am very well supported by senior leadership about the security here on the campus; they really have gone out of their way to provide to me the latest in technol- ogy with all of our expansion. But if I had to choose one thing – I think it’s something that all of my colleagues around the country are experiencing – that is the ease and affordability in the converting of existing, yet aging analog cameras from recording on digital video recorders onto a hospital’s network. That’s a very costly proposi- tion at this moment, but I think it’s something that we really need to address. There are hundreds of campuses across this nation, and Mercy is included, that have many, many analog cameras and it’s just cost-prohibitive to change out all those cameras from analog to IP. It only makes sense to be able to convert them to record on the net- work and many of the DVRs that are in existence today are no longer manufactured – at least the parts are not available. So we’ve come to a crossroads with the technology that we really need to spend some energy in converting analog to the network. Tony Venezia: Security system technology changes constantly, and in the past we had invested heavily in analog cameras and recording devices. Currently IP systems have become popular due to their video storage solutions and better picture quality. What is a cost-effective method of converting the older systems, like the analog camera, to the newer IP system? We have looked into this issue, but you lose some picture quality and they are cost prohibitive. I believe we need a cost-effective solution that allows us to convert older, ana- log cameras in IP quality systems. Another desired solution would be a high-quality visitor manage-
ment system that is user-friendly. Part of our issue is that we’re an open campus during the day and, like most other facilities, we restrict access after normal visiting hours are over. How do you manage the visitors that are in patient rooms after you have restricted visitation? Linda Fite: We’re in the preliminary stages of putting together a
proposal to get Tasers for our security officers. I don’t know if it is a Midwestern thing, but several of the hospitals in the Minneapolis- St. Paul area have gone to using Tasers and their experiences have
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