If you’re involved in security within a healthcare facility, you’re responsible for the safety of all people within the building – visitors, employees, and patients. Balancing the wants and needs of these parties in a healthcare facility can be difficult, especially when attempting to create a secure and welcoming site.
Visibly identifying all visitors is extremely important in creating a safer hospital campus. It allows staff and patients to know who is allowed onsite with just a glance, creating a secure environment for staff to care for patients.
The ISG has been a leader in healthcare identification for over 40 years, including visitor identification. Below are some healthcare visitor identification best practices to help support your safety goals while also keeping the visitor check-in process both efficient and welcoming.
1. Close the Identification Loop
Use Visitor ID badges to identify all people within a hospital. Most staff, patients, and vendors are identified with some sort of ID badge; add visitors to that list in order to make sure everyone on site has some sort of visual identification. No one should be walking around your facility without a highly visible ID badge attached to their person. With healthcare workers being five times more likely to be a victim of workplace violence than all other occupations combined, protocols for visitor management are a vital piece of ensuring safety.
2. Keep Visitors from Re-entry After Hours
Time Expiring Visitor Badges help hospital staff easily identify visitors who have exceeded their allotted visiting hours, and provide an extra layer of security by preventing re-use. Time-expiring badges are ideal for general identification, or high-security areas such as labor and delivery, ICU, or the ER. With just a quick glance, your staff will know that a visitor is no longer allowed to be onsite.
3. Print Essential Details on Visitor ID Badges
We recommend including a headshot, first and last name, patient room #, and “valid until” date on all visitor badges. It’s crucial to make sure all visitor ID badges have the needed information so your staff can confirm the visitor’s identity and where they’re allowed to be at any time.
4. Choose the Right Thermal Printer
Thermal badge printers are compact, efficient, and cost-effective, giving you the option to print expiring or non-expiring badges. They allow you to print a high-quality direct thermal image, such as a headshot, on visitor ID badges with minimal downtime and easy implementation. Given the fact these printers don’t require ink or toner, they are also more eco-friendly than other print methods.
5. Track Visitors in Your Facility with a Printed Barcode
Adding barcodes to your facility’s visitor ID badges can enable visitors to easily scan in and out of your facility for easy access. Implementing a barcode check-in/check-out policy enables you to know who is still on site, and when they left. This information is key for emergency situations and tracking the number of visitors per patient.
Bonus: Use Visitor-friendly Badging Accessories
To make scanning in visitors even easier, we recommend choosing clip-on style badges so visitors can easily take their badges off, scan them on a turnstile or door, then put them back on. If your visitor badges are adhesive, scanning them at entry points could be difficult if they’ve adhered to your visitor’s clothing.
Visitor Identification Solutions from the ISG
The ISG has over 40 years of experience with healthcare visitor, employee and patient ID solutions. Our nationwide network of ID, tracking and security experts has everything you need to make your healthcare facility efficient and secure.
Contact us today and we will put you in contact with your local ISG member dealer to help you navigate through your visitor identification needs to find exactly the right solution for your goals. You can also take a look at some of our more popular wristbands and labels, downtime solutions and patient ID systems.
Original article written by Jess Johnson and Luciano Arnone for PDC.
