Revolutionizing Healthcare Access: The Growing Importance of Access Control Solutions
At the heart of designing every hospital or healthcare space is the desire to make it safe and secure enough to be a home away from home. How do architects and planners go about that?
Larger and more complex facilities will always tend to have higher risks. Hospitals also handle the highest amount of traffic in a single day including patients, doctors, and medical staff. Let's take a look at some of these standout trends.
What Are the Trends that are Making it to Almost Every Project?
1. Reporting and Monitoring Systems: Data from access control systems at strategic points, can help gather data on people's movement. This information can aid in the security planning and management of unauthorized people in secured or restricted areas of the hospital. Security efforts can lead to an overall achievement of employee and customer safety and protection. This, in turn, leads to better service and ultimately business growth. The integration of electronic access systems with the overall Hospital Information Systems and other related systems such as Nurse Call Systems, or internal communication systems within the hospital gives the management added control over operations.
2. Restricted Access for Secure Areas: Hospitals by nature are complex in terms of structure and function. Different zones within hospitals like infant care, intensive care, or surgical areas can sometimes demand different levels of security.
3. Protection of assets like information, medical supplies, and medical equipment is also a huge area of concern within hospitals that one can easily take care of through added layers of access control.
4. Electronic Access Control: By far, electronic lock systems surpass protection by manual locks due to how tough it is for them to be broken into, and is today's preferred choice, almost by default. A lot of existing healthcare facilities are seen adopting electronic systems to replace manual lock systems.
5. Badges and Cards: One can enforce access control through the use of badges/cards for certain employees only deployed to certain areas like infant care, surgical wards, and storage rooms. Apart from that it also solves many safety issues like protection from theft and unauthorized access and provides multi-level security. These systems can keep track of the movement of staff and help keep tight control of security through integration with surveillance systems. RFID technology is most often used here.
6. Complete Touch and Barrier-Free Environments: Keeping in mind the heavy flow of patients, visitors, doctors, and staff, maintaining a germ and barrier-free environment is the main objective for all architects and planners when planning the overall design of the facility. This largely includes using touch and barrier-free automatic door and entrance systems. Every new hospital is built with automated door systems both at the main entry and exit as well as within the facility. Doors are designed to be activated through sensors and slide open making large pathways for stretchers and wheelchairs. Automatic doors also make it easier for disabled or sick patients to walk in and out of centers without having to open the doors themselves.
A higher flow of people is also better managed without the constant manual opening and closing of doors that create a blocked funnel of the thoroughfare. Additionally, different types of doors are fitted in different areas of the hospital. Areas like surgical theatres and maternity wards would have doors that open only through restricted access control.
Many healthcare institutions are replacing outdated door systems with automatic door systems.
7. Ventilation Systems: One of the top concerns in a hospital is air leakage control and ventilation strategy. Ventilation systems are necessary for controlling the spread of air-borne diseases and conserving and maintaining temperature-controlled airflow and energy. Needless to say, the pressure on architects to implement the right systems when designing healthcare facilities is high.
Isolation wards are usually pressurized to ensure control of disease spread and a robust door system that is air-tight plays a massive role. The best way to ensure that is by using perfectly air-tight door systems. Various methods of air leakage detection also exist to help point out exactly where leakages are.
What dormakaba Offers
As a partner, dormakaba offers fully automated and customizable access solutions for an entire healthcare facility. This includes state-of-the-art touch and barrier-free entrance and internal doorway systems and all of the latest hardware and software solutions that go into every access control solution.
We bring to the table detailed security solutions for the smallest to the largest hospitals or healthcare centers.
We also provide convenient access control for patient rooms and sensitive areas including asset storage areas. These systems can be controlled at the touch of a button remotely from security or administration desks.
How Are These Recent Trends Benefiting Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities?
The goal of every healthcare facility today is to make the patient feel at home, secure, and well taken care of. Barrier and touch-free door systems provide not only infection control but also tight security and a more comfortable experience for patients and visitors.
Monitoring systems and reporting allow hospitals to supervise operations, collect data, and analyze issues within the system. This helps healthcare facility owners solve problems that will eventually impact safety, convenience, and patient care. The integration of access control systems with nurse call systems and other hospital software systems help ensure exactly that.
Monitoring ensures that you do not miss out on any part of supervision and tracking of operations. This is possible at the touch of a button and replaces manual reporting systems and intervention, therefore also saving time and costs and eliminating human error.
Automatic door systems ensure that patients, visitors, doctors, and staff do not transfer germs through contact contributing to infection control. Air-tight doors ensure ventilation support to better control the spread of infection through the air and save on energy loss and eventually costs as well.
Owing to its complex nature, we have already seen that hospitals and healthcare facilities have different areas demarcated serving different purposes. Any breach of entry from unwanted visitors can threaten the life of patients through the spread of germs. Maternity wards and infant care units very often see theft of infants and therefore need absolute tight security in terms of the best in modern access control.
Hospitals, healthcare facilities, recovery centers, and centers for the aged all house a lot of medical supplies and equipment that run high costs, warranting the necessity for controlled access and surveillance. Planners need to consider how drastically asset theft could impact business as well as patient care.
It is possible to greatly increase operational efficiency through automation. Opening of doors and sanitization of surfaces touched by visitors, patients, and staff are reduced when automatic doors and access cards or badges are used for entry into and within the hospital. Management of operations is possible remotely and through collected data from access control systems. Smoother operations are possible because reporting systems provide hospitals with data on staff, patient, doctor, and visitor flow through all areas.
Security-based monitoring can ensure the safety of the overall facility. Tracking allows one to detect errors and improve processes. Modern access control makes all this possible.
Long-Term Care Facilities are also benefiting from access control and door automation
Assisted living and care homes for the elderly have a whole set of needs in terms of access control and security. Being long-term stay facilities, these spaces are quite vulnerable and susceptible to unauthorized entry, theft, and the spread of germs. Some of the trends seen in these homes are:
1. Telephone and video-based entry access systems help filter, track, and monitor visitor entry. Room access control through smartphones and cards helps maintain a contact-free environment as well as helps to control the spread of germs from staff to resident patients and vice-versa.
2. Video recording systems tied to access control allow surveillance through central control stations by staff.
3. RFID tracking and NFC technologies enable the location of patients and tagged items to be located.
4. Digitization of basic processes like the maintenance of healthcare records allows easy access and continuous monitoring by caregivers and doctors.
5. Environmental, biomedical, and motion sensors in devices like pacemakers, insulin injectors, or gesture detectors also aid in creating robust health monitoring systems.
6. The use of assistive robotic services, smart toilets, and cloud-based monitoring systems is also on the rise.
7. AI-integrated sensors in rooms can predict the risk of falls for elderly patients and report movements leading to alerts when necessary.
8. Access-card-based tracking of staff also adds to the ease of management of overall operations in these facilities.
Best Practices for Integrating Access Solutions into the Design, Construction, and Operation of Healthcare Facilities
Working with the right solution provider that helps contribute in multiple ways at the planning stage is key. Look to partner with providers that understand the needs of all stakeholders playing a vital role in the success or failure of the facility’s operations and business. Such a partner will have an all-around view of how to access solutions that contribute to various facets of the business and can recommend better solutions to architects, planners, and facility owners.
The overall external security of the facility is important but so are the internal areas like critical care and laboratories that usually need restriction of entry and much tight access control. Understanding this is key to helping provide security to patients, visitors, staff, and doctors. Emergency and escape routes also should be planned at this point keeping access solutions teams very closely involved. A lot of legal requirements and codes exist concerning hospital access points in passageways and attention should also be paid to that at the time of planning.
When selecting overall solutions or hardware systems, infection control and convenience must be at the heart of the choice of material, design, and solution selection. Pay close attention to the treatment of ICUs, operation theatres, and laboratories that require the best door solutions with restricted access control. Where budgets are met, some planners may include individual access-based authorization and locker systems for medical testing and laboratory equipment. Adherence to safety norms and standards for all critical and infant care areas is very high on the security front and of great importance to healthcare facility owners.
All-access control systems must be usable by management. All-access routes must be planned to keep fire, safety, and emergency exit protocols in mind for the whole facility as well as individual sections of the facility. The working functionality with other solutions like nurse calls or hospital information systems must be taken into consideration. This will offer holistic reporting and monitoring. Lastly, compliance with local industry standards and regulations for all access solutions must be ensured.
Where dormakaba’s Focus Lies
Hospitals demand much including multi-level access, access points within passageways and corridors, emergency and exit pathways, and protocols governing them all. We have experience in integrating it all. For us, with all our project planning and execution, customization is key.
Right from the stage of planning and design, our technical teams work with architects and planners to bring out the right solutions fitting the needs of your project. We go a step further to ensure the sustenance of the life and efficiency of the solutions provided through after-sales service and maintenance contracts.
Our teams are well experienced in the recommendation, planning, and execution of access solution integration in the healthcare sector.
Some of our prized projects include The Royal Adelaide Hospital and The Tirol Kliniken GmbH, a large multi-faceted healthcare company in Austria. These are two great examples of our range of products, solutions, and execution capabilities. We can help architects and planners efficiently strategize and implement access control solutions for any size of a healthcare facility project.
In Conclusion
Largely, safety, infection control, ease of access, and ventilation standards drive design in the healthcare realm. While the end consumer must experience inclusiveness, safety, and a modern feel in technology integrations, healthcare facilities must ensure compliance with the norms that apply to people flow, access points, and emergency routes at all times. This is where teams like dormakaba’s make architects' and planners' work a whole lot simpler.
Reach out to us for a consultation on your next healthcare facility project.
