Frank Roll on Security at Healthcare Facilities

Managing security in a health-care environment presents unique challenges.

By Daintry Duffy

December 01, 2003 — CSO — Managing security in a health-care environment presents unique challenges. Not only are hospital emergency rooms and newborn nurseries primary targets for crime, there is also the potential that terrorists could use a health-care facility as a secondary target to augment the effect of a bombing or a bioterrorism incident. CSO spoke with Fred Roll, president of Roll Enterprises, a health-care security consultancy based in Morrison, Colo., about terrorism and hospitals and the vulnerabilities that remain at many health-care facilities.CSO: How do you approach security planning with a health-care facility?Fred Roll: Terrorism brings in a whole new set of issues for health-care facilities. They need to look at existing policies and procedures and protocols but also take three steps back and try to think like a terrorist. One of the things I do in seminars is I have people get together in small groups to decide what they would do if they were terrorists and wanted to have the greatest effect in shutting down operations within a facility. The stuff they come up with in five minutes scares me to death. They spend five minutes, but terrorists spend every waking hour thinking about how they can effect a terror act. If you ask people whether hospitals are a primary target for terrorists, most people agree that they are not, but there is the potential for hospitals to become a secondary target. If a terror event takes place, and people are sick or injured, after triage and after decontamination they will end up in a health-care facility. If terrorists wanted to have an additional psychological effect, they might target the places where the injured go. A health-care security program needs to be reasonable, appropriate, cost-effective and defensible. [Hospital management] has to look at the potential of a terror event and consider vulnerabilities like infection control and utility management. Potential areas of risk are the power plant and oxygen and radiological storage. What is the weakest link that remains unaddressed in health-care site security?The number-one uncontrolled risk is after-hours access. A lot of hospitals want to allow open visitation as opposed to controlled visitation. I have no problem with appropriate people entering through a controlled point, where they can be screened and authorized. But without that, the hospital has no idea whether [the people wandering in and out] are good guys, bad guys, terrorists, infant abductors, sexual predators or thieves. If there's an

• Print

• 7 Security Lessons from the Emergency Room
• Biometric Security