Connecticut Children’s Medical Centre was searching for a system to improve their existing visitor management solution, which consisted of color-coded plastic badges and paper sign-in sheets.
“Getting the right pass for the right person was an extremely cumbersome process,” said Phillip LeClair, CHPA, security manager with Connecticut Children’s Medical Centre.
The medical centre’s search for a better solution was accelerated by a security incident, after which the state asked the hospital to enhance the way they processed and tracked visitors.
Organisational goals
The medical centre initially became interested in HID Global’s EasyLobby® Secure Visitor Management (SVM™) software after learning about its robust feature set, which closely aligned with their organisational goals to manage visitors securely, flexibly and simply.
But once they watched a free web demo, they were also impressed with the power and flexibility the platform provided. Of particular interest was the ability to configure EasyLobby with all of the peripherals the medical centre wanted, including business cards, drivers licenses, barcode scanners and digital cameras.
EasyLobby visitor management
“Today, EasyLobby is used to the fullest at Connecticut Children’s Medical Centre,” said LeClair. “We use EasyLobby to check in every visitor who enters our facility, at every entrance. All locations in the hospital are listed in the Category field and the inpatient being visited is prominently displayed. Visitor badges are printed with a barcode for easy check-out. Even employees who have lost or forgotten their IDs are processed via EasyLobby.”
The medical centre also uses EasyLobby to produce multi-day visitor passes, allowing guests to be checked in and out with a quick and easy barcode scan, either at a badging station or with EasyLobby’s mobile scanners. Service levels are enhanced by using EasyLobby’s self-check-in kiosk, which provides a touch screen and drivers license scanner for visitors, and the e-Advance web-based system that allows employees to pre-register visitors using their intranet.
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| The organisation plans to implement EasyLobby in its expansion and new developments |
Successful results
Connecticut Children’s Medical Centre uses the percentage of visitors checked out as an ROI indicator and since has achieved a 90 percent check-out rate. The medical centre has also benefitted from being able to use EasyLobby database records for internal investigations to assist law enforcement and prevent incidents.
“What we particularly like about the EasyLobby software is its flexibility and expandability,” said LeClair. “We started with one workstation and quickly expanded to eight workstations to encompass the entire facility. EasyLobby has been great to work with and is actually one of the security tools that sold me on taking the job as Security Manager at Connecticut Children’s Medical Centre – it really does help us live up to our mission to protect our future.”
When the medical centre was audited by a leading security consultant, they not only received a top review, but also were told they may be among the most secure children’s hospitals in the United States.
As Connecticut Children’s Medical Centre expands to multiple buildings and facilities, the organisation plans to implement EasyLobby in its expansion and new developments.
“Right now we’re a fairly small operation, but we badge 2,200 visitors a day as well as 50-100 vendors,” said LeClair. Over time, the medical centre is planning to expand the use of EasyLobby for mobile solutions, and to use EasyLobby in satellite and remote facilities.
